before settling
in the wilderness. The strong, inherited respect for landed estates must
have given such charters their value, as it is hard for us to see now
how any one in England could have prevented the pioneers from settling
where they pleased. The various patents and grants of the two colonies
(indefinite as they seem to us now, as some granted "up to" a hundred
acres to each emigrant without defining any boundaries) brought the two
colonies face to face at Bound Brook. The result was a dispute over the
harvesting of salt hay.

All boundary streams attract to themselves a certain amount of fame--the
Rio Grande, the Saint Lawrence, and the Rhine. But surely the little
stream of Bound Brook, which was finally taken as the line of division
between two colonies of such historical importance as the Plymouth and
the Massachusetts Bay, is worth more than a superficial attention. The
dispute lasted many years and occasioned the appointing of numerous
commissioners from both sides. That the salt grass of Bassing Beach
should have assumed such importance reveals again the sensitiveness to
land values of men who had so recently left England. The settling of the
dispute was not referred back to England, but was settled by the
colonists themselves.

The author of the "Narrative History of Cohasset" calls this an event of
only less historical importance than that of the pact drawn up in the
cabin of the Mayflower. He declares that the confederation of states had
its inception there, and adds: "The appointment for this joint
commission for the settlement of this intercolonial difficulty was the
first step of federation that culminated in the Colonial Congress and
then blossomed into the United States." We to-day, to whom the salt
grass of Cohasset is little more than a fringe about the two harbors,
may find it difficult to agree fully with such a sweeping statement, but
certainly this spot and boundary line should always be associated with
the respect for property which has ennobled the Anglo-Saxon race.

Between the marshes, which were of such high importance in those early
days, and the ledges which have been the cause and the scene of so many
Cohasset adventures, twists Jerusalem Road, the brilliant beauty of
which has been so often--but never too often--remarked. This was the
main road from Hingham for many years, and it took full three hours of
barbarous jolting in two-wheeled, springless ox carts to make the trip.
Even