4 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



far and near. They tramped to Sandwich and 

 the canal region, to Middleboro, ^^ridgewater and 

 Duxbury as we know them now, to Boston; 

 sooner or later to all the world. Some of the 

 trails they trod may be forgotten, some oif them 

 are main-travelled highways, others remain nar- 

 row footpath ways through a country beautiful 

 and often as unsophisticated as it was when the 

 feet of the first Pilgrims pressed them. Therein 

 lies for all the world the chief charm of the Old 

 Colony region. Along the old Pilgrim trails you 

 may step from modern culture and its acme of 

 civilization through the pasture lands of the Pil- 

 grims into glimpses of the forest primeval. The 

 Pilgrims' boulders, their kettle-hole ponds, mossy 

 swamps and ferny hillsides, here and there their 

 very forest trees, await you still. For Indian 

 and panther you need not look ; wolf or bear you 

 will hardly see ; the wild turkeys are gone ; other- 

 wise the wild life of the forest remains. 



The first Pilgrim land trail is today Leyden 

 street, leading from the water's edge to their 

 fort on Burial Hill. You may follow it, though 

 the marks of Pilgrim feet are buried beneath city 

 pavement, save perhaps on the crest of the hill 

 itself, and though bluebird and robin flutter shyly 



