uch as think on Lott's wife, for a very thought would have
oversett our wherry."

When boats and vessels were built by the colonists, they were in forms
or had names but little used to-day. Shallop, ketch, pink, and snow are
rarely heard. Sloops were early built, but schooner is a modern term.
Batteau and periagua still are used; and the gundalow, picturesque with
its lateen sail, still is found on our northern New England shores.

The Indians had narrow foot-paths in many places through the woods. On
them foot-travel was possible, though many estuaries and rivers
intersected the coast; for the narrow streams could be crossed on
natural ford-ways, or on rude bridges of fallen trees, which the English
government ordered to be put in place.

As late as 1631 Governor Endicott would not go from Salem to Boston to
visit Governor Winthrop because he was not strong enough to wade across
the fords. He might have done as Governor Winthrop did the next year
when he went to Plymouth to visit Governor Bradford (and it took him two
days to get there); he might have been carried across the fords
pickaback by an Indian guide.

The Indian paths were good, though only two or three feet wide, and in
many places the savages kept the woods clear from underbrush by burning
over large tracts. When King Philip's War took place, all the land
around the Indian settlements in Narragansett and eastern Massachusetts
was so free of brush that horsemen could ride everywhere freely through
the woods. Some of the old paths are famous in our history. The most so
was the Bay Path, which ran from Cambridge through Marlborough,
Worcester, Oxford, Brookfield, and on to Springfield and the Connecticut
River. Holland's beautiful story called by the name of the path gives
its history, its sentiment, and much that happened on it in olden times.

When new paths were cut through the forests, the settlers "blazed" the
trees, that is, they chopped a piece of the bark off tree after tree
standing on the side of the way. Thus the "blazes" stood out clear and
white in the dark shadows of the forests, like welcome guide-posts,
showing the traveller his way. In Maryland roads turning off to a church
were marked by slips or blazes cut near the ground.

In Maryland and Virginia what were known as, and indeed are still
called, rolling-roads were cut through the forest. They were narrow
roads adown which hogsheads of tobacco, fitted with axles, could be
drawn or