to it. According
to your historical knowledge and your emotional grasp Bunker Hill
Monument is significant.

Skimming thus over the many-storied city, in a sort of literary
airplane, it has been possible to point out only a few of the most
conspicuous places and towers. The Common lies like a tiny pocket
handkerchief of path-marked green at the foot of crowded Beacon Hill;
the white Esplanade curves beside the blue Charles; the Back Bay is only
a checkerboard of streets, alphabetically arranged; Copley Square is
hardly distinguishable. The spires of the Old South Church, King's
Chapel, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall punctuate the South End;
the North Church, the North End. The new Custom House Tower and Bunker
Hill Monument seem hardly more than the minarets of a child's toy
village.

The writer, as a pilot over this particular city, alights and resigns,
commending for more detailed study, and for delightful guidance, Robert
Shackleton's "Book of Boston." Let us now leave the city and set out in
a more leisurely fashion on our way to Plymouth.

THE OLD COAST ROAD

_From Boston to Plymouth_

[Illustration: THE SOUTH SHORE OFMASSACHUSETTS BAY]

THE OLD COAST ROAD

CHAPTER I

DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST ROAD

[Illustration]

The very earliest of the great roads in New England was the Old Coast
Road, connecting Boston with Plymouth--capitals of separate colonies. Do
we, casually accepting the fruit of three hundred years of toil on this
continent--do we, accustomed to smooth highways and swift and easy
transportation, realize the significance of such a road?

A road is the symbol of the civilization which has produced it. The main
passageway from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea,
although it has been pressed for centuries immemorial by myriads of
human feet, has never been more than a bridle path. On the other hand,
wherever the great Roman Empire stepped, it engineered mighty
thoroughfares which are a marvel to this day. A road is the thread on
which the beads of history are strung; the beads of peace as well as
those of war. Thrilling as is the progress of aerial navigation, with
its infinite possibilities of human intercourse, yet surely, when the
entire history of man is unrolled, the moment of the conception of
building a wide and permanent road, instead of merely using a trail,
will rank as equally dramatic. The first stone laid by the first Roman