212 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
horse, but enabling the pedestrian to go from 
any one of these villages to any other in a line 
almost direct, and always under an agreeable 
shade. By the longest of these hidden ways, 
one may go from Pigeon Cove to Gloucester, 
ten miles, without seeing a public road. In the 
little inn at the former village there used to 
hang an old map of this whole forest region, 
giving a chart of some of these paths, which 
were said to date back to the first settlement 
of the country. One of them, for instance, was 
called on the map “Old Road from Sandy Bay 
to Squam Meeting-house through the Woods;” 
but the road is now scarcely even a bridle-path, 
and the most faithful worshipper could not 
seek Squam Meeting-house in the family chaise. 
Those woods have been lately devastated ; but 
when I first knew that region, it was as good 
as any German forest. Often we stepped al- 
most from the edge of the sea into some gap in 
the woods; there seemed hardly more than a 
rabbit track, yet presently we met some way- 
farer who had crossed the Cape by it. A piny 
dell gave some vista of the broad sea we were 
leaving, and an opening in the woods displayed 
another blue sea-line before; the encountering 
breezes interchanged odor of berry bush and 
scent of brine; penetrating farther among oaks 
and chestnuts, we come upon some little cot- 
