Mountains and Islands 



the highways of our own day follow their 

 course, and are laid on their very foundations. 

 The genesis of the road, not the great trunk- 

 roads deliberately made for military or trade 

 purposes, but of the ordinary highways, takes 

 us back to the very beginning of things. The 

 first man took the easiest route, the line of 

 least resistance, skirting the hills or descending 

 into the vales as appeared to him least trouble- 

 some ; his successor followed in his footsteps, 

 and so the road was made. Man and beast 

 conspired to give it its permanent direction ; 

 succeeding generations spent their labour in 

 strengthening its foundations, improving its 

 surface, and bridging the obstacles in its course. 

 It was once my lot to take an ox-waggon 

 through an out-of-the-way corner of Matabclc- 

 land. Probably no white man had ever ex- 

 plored the district, and of course there was 

 no road. So we had to make one. M}' 

 "mate" and I rode ahead with axes ready to 

 cut down obnoxious trees, and the waggon 

 drawn by eighteen oxen came lumbering after, 

 the whole "outfit" crashing over minor shrubs 

 and leaving an obvious trail behind. When 

 we came to a river we had to make a " drift," 



■03 



