It is not only assumable, but fairly certain, that the early settlers gradually widened out the trodden path so that companions could travel together, side by side, and that their next act would naturally be to extend the width of the passage to permit of the use of a sled or a wagon. Thus, with a little grading of the highest parts and a corduroy or plank support over wet and boggy places, the foundation was laid for the farm lane. ' The demarcation of such old lanes by the huge bowlders drawn from the cleared lands followed, which laborious process permanently fixed the course of such a roadway. The direction of certain of these old cartways

INDIAN NOTES

INTRODUCTION

led to their extended use and development into highways.

Thus, with the aid of the records of the position of native settlements, and by recent observations and exploration, we can trace, in the known course of some ancient highway following natural lines of contour, the pathway connecting the native stations. There is indeed historical warrant for these deductions, in the case of some known paths which, by the processes above described, became the Kingsway or the Post-road of the Colonial period. Interesting combinations of recorded fact and deduction from physical circumstances are to be found in the Indian trails on the Island of Manhattan, of Brooklyn, and the Bronx, traversing the forest-grown site of the great metropolis.

Around the site of each native settlement, other little paths branched out to all the nearby sources of food and supplies. The most used, and therefore perhaps the widest, was the way to the spring or the bank of a brook, on which trail at some time