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

AND MONOGRAPHS

INDIAN PATHS

daily the whole community and even the village dogs traveled to quench their thirst.

Through the underbrush some path always led to a nearby planting-ground, trod by patient women workers of the soil, or by a cheerful crowd combining to gather the ripened corn or to bring in the daily supply of beans and squashes. In the summer season other of the women folk could be seen making their way on narrow trails through the woods to gather the wild fruits in brake and thicket, the strawberry, wild 'henry, and blueberries, or, in fall to collect the mushrooms and other fungi, to shake down the hickory nuts and walnuts, or in early spring to tap the maple for its sweet sap.

Down at the marsh, while the men were snaring mink or muskrat, or shooting bullfrogs or blackbirds, the girls were gathering roots of sweet-flag, or scratching up the arrow-leaf tubers or artichokes, to fill the vegetal larder.

The elder boys were out on slender bypaths in the wild woods gathering sumac and bark for their elders to smoke, and