lO 



OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



The world at large, hurtling through Plymouth 

 in its high-powered motor cars, stops along the 

 road over Manomet and finds its arbutus there 

 each May. I like to look for mine along the path 

 that Billington took to his ''sea," a way that leads 

 out of Leyden street and up along Town Brook. 

 I think the second oldest of the Plymouth land 

 trails lies up that way. If the first was to and 

 from the fort the second surely lay up along the 

 brook, and I have an idea the Indians had pre- 

 ceded them in the making of this. 



A great terminal moraine once blocked off Bil- 

 lington sea from the ocean, but Town Brook re- 

 leased it. Long before the Pilgrims came it had 

 cut its valley through the great wall of gravel and 

 occupied it in peace till latter day highways and 

 factories came to vex it. In spite of these, un- 

 hampered bits of the original brook show in 

 Plymouth itself and you are not far out of town 

 before you see more of it. 



It flows out of the "sea" unhindered now save 

 by pickerel weed and sagittaria, rush and 

 meadow grasses, and in woodsy places by brook 

 alder, clethra, huckleberry and spice-bush that 

 lean into it as they wrestle with greenbrier and 

 clematis. The mayflower snuggles into the 



