8 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



traces of an ancient type of fencing that I have 

 not seen elsewhere. It may have been a hedge- 

 maker's trick, brought from the old country. 

 The Cape pioneers slashed young white oaks 

 growing along the road margin, bent them, say 

 two feet above the ground, without severing, and 

 laid them level, the tops bound tight with withes 

 to the next trunk. Thus they had a fence that 

 would restrain cattle and that grew stouter as the 

 years went by. You find these trees growing 

 thus today, their trunks a foot or two in diame- 

 ter, bending at right angles just above ground 

 and stretching horizontally, while what were once 

 limbs now grow trunks from the grotesque butt. 

 A remnant of fence like this along an almost ob- 

 literated trail in an ancient wood gives a hob- 

 goblin character to the place. 



The heath family, all the way from clethra 

 which begins it to cranberry which ends it, dwells 

 in beauty and diversity all about in the Plymouth 

 woods, making them fragrant the year round. 

 Some of them help feed the world, notably the 

 cranberries and the huckleberries of a score of 

 varieties from the pale, inch high, earliest sweet 

 blueberries growing on the dry hillsides to the 

 giants of the deep swamp, hanging out of reach 



