F all the summer pastimes, sports, and avocations ever extolled in the magazines devoted to outdoor recreation, I never saw a word of the science of road-exploring. And yet there is nothing more fascinating; it appeals alike to the antiquarian and to the lover of nature; yes, and is not without its atom of danger beside.

Materials of first necessity: a topbuggy long since relegated to the back shed, innocent of varnish and stout beyond the deacon's dreams; second, an ancient nag, capable of forging through an unbroken clump of birches, straddling a ditch, or pirouetting his way across a rotten bridge, with constant unruffled equanimity; third, a calm and wary driver, skilled in the devices of his special art. Desiderata: a good road-map, an axe, and a rope. With such an equipment my expert driver and I set forth one July day to investigate a certain locality long under consideration. We have become acquainted, by map and by experience, with a network of welltraveled highways, which in an abstract appear as in the accompanying diagram. (Plan No. 1.)

Observe the gap between A and B. There are no houses at those junctions, nor are the roads that leave them of special importance; ergo, it is not mere chance that brings them into exact line; there ought to be, must be, is, a forgotten thoroughfare spanning the mile interval. There is no indication of it on the old county map, but never mind, it shall be restored to our private copy.

We make our start in the morning, when the night must have been burned away, leaving behind a sparkle of dew upon the grass; when the vireos are making the wayside trees ring with their chatter, and now and then a black-throated green warbler, from the top of a distant pine, lets fall his dainty watchword of "Trees, trees, murmuring trees." The highways are dry and sandy, but soon we shall be tracking a sodden path, unknown either to plodding farmers or stylish. rigs from the summer hotel.

Even the loitering pace of Rock, our veteran back-roadster, in time puts the miles behind, and from between dusty lanes of alder, birch, and pine we arrive at the three-corners, A. True to our reasoning, behold the Abandoned Road, grass-grown, deserted. No fence bars the way, and heavy ruts indicate that logging teams have penetrated there in the past spring Our advance is easy and open. We cross a marshy lowland, where old Rock sinks to his ankles in mud, but plods floundering through. Beyond, a rise among thick pines, where the needles crackle fragrantly under the wheels. There the loggers turned away to the right to seek their spoil, but we continue straight, guided by the gap, through the boles, like a cathedral aisle between its pillars, and by the double line of stone-walls. How long ago, I wonder, did the sturdy pioneers heap up those moss-grown embankments of gray granite, and thereby clear their mowings also? They builded well and for the future, but

A

PLAN NO. 1.-ROADS IN TEMPLETON, MASS.

now their work lies obscured among the trees, serving only to mark the deserted route of a buried generation. They did not scant the land for their roads in those days; no country lane is this, but a highway spanning a good hundred feet from wall to wall.

Over the hill we drive, and down across a brook where the successive floods of years have washed away the small stone culvert, and Rock has an opportunity to show his skill. He carefully plants his hoofs on the slippery slabs, and with a leap lands on the other side; the tough vehicle bobs after with a thump, which nearly sends us off the seat, and we follow, swaying, in the wake of the quadruped. It is seldom that these old culverts are found in such bad condition; this one was small and comparatively weak. Usually they are built like a Cyclopean wall and endure like

one.

The foundations are of granite blocks, the top of a huge single slab, and no cement or mortar was employed. The modern concrete arches compete with them in durability, but not in picturesqueness.

Next the varied way leads through an alder thicket, grown up so closely that the branches lash us in the face, or would did we not hastily raise the carriage-top for protection. A tiny

brook has usurped the once worn road and drenched it with spring freshets till only a bed of pebbles remains Thence we emerge in course and enter another grove of evergreens.

At the top of a hill the horse comes to a halt against the trunk of a great fallen pine. Out jumps the driver for a bit of scouting. He returns shortly and reports the railway ahead. But there are gates in the fence on both sides, and so we escape the fallen tree by a detour, and cross the bare rails with rude bumps. The banks on either side the track show unmistakably that the road had been given up before the railway was built, in the neighborhood of 1874.

Now we are practically sure of effecting a passage to the end, for where there are gates there are men who open them, and they did not enter from our direction. Probably Farmer Doolittle comes that way to fetch his "medder hay."

The problem first appeared in this shape:

See our second diagram to trace the obliterated route from C to D. Nearly all these roads, even the mapped ones, are grass-grown relics which once served farms now abandoned. It is a surprise tu he uninitiated to learn how far one can travel in Massachusetts on such a skeleton of a defunct era. At times it parallels the main roads of today; again it forms short cuts from town to town, marking always the

world, where the sun, glinting between the thick leaves overhead, flecks the mossy slabs of stone and still mossier boulders in the stream below; then up a steep rise to an open hilltop disclosing a view far off across the valleys. There, on a finely chosen site, stood a farmhouse in years long gone; now there remains only the grassy cellar hole, mounded about with unusual

straightest and hilliest courses. A fifteen per cent grade was nothing to the six-horse stages which used to thunder down the hills, gathering momentum for the upgrade.

What enchanting spots we pass as we enter from the Gardner side! First, descending a long hill between enflanking rows of pines, to an old stone bridge in the loveliest dell in the

care, and guarded in front by two of the handsomest elms in all New England. The barn was placed across the road and down the hill, low enough not to obstruct the view. Such mounds and cellais and trees are to this new country what ivy-clad ruins are to the older lands of Europe, relics and landmarks of her early history.

Not much farther on we reach the beginning of the unknown at point C. A swinging gate separates us from a sheeprun; we open and enter. One stone-wall yet remains to indicate the old

still well defined, descends into a swamp, where luxurious nature defies our efforts. In vain we chop down some trees, override others, and push ahead at the risk of capsizing; the trunks grow thicker still and closer, and perforce we must turn back.

But we do not leave our task without another attempt. Forcing a way through a cow pasture to the traveled road which runs parallel, we make a circuitous way to point D. Not one man in a hundred passing by would dream that a highway ever existed on that spot. Pines, beeches, hemlocks six inches in diameter, are growing in the former wheel-track, and only the twin walls of granite cobbles still bear their enduring witness to man's handiwork.

I wonder whether such scenes are to be found outside New England. Does the red clay of Virginia or the sand of Florida lend itself to the perpetuation of abandoned roads? Surely the newer regions of the great West

can show nothing of the kind. For their existence in their present state is largely due to the great relocation of population in the nineteenth century. the movement from the hilltops to the valleys. Our forefathers planted their villages and their slender spires where they might be visible from miles away, and careless of time and toil, lined their roads by compass, not by con tour. Their children, drawn by the later lure of railways and water powers, were compelled to descend to the valleys, leaving behind them those "old towns" or "centers" which very recently are reviving under the wave of outdoor life and summer visitors. Thus new lines of traffic were established, and the old, voted out of existence by unfeeling selectmen, are left. to be returfed and forested by nature.

There is an humbler sort of Abandoned Road, the poor cousin of the discontinued highway. It is not dignified with walls, nor was it ever laid out with rod and transit, to serve the

public at town or county expense and risk. Some private citizen made it to reach his mowing, or to cut off his first-growth pine. These are the dim and devious ways you see entering the woods in aimless fashion as you drive along the dusty highway, and, perhaps, incuriously wonder "where does that road go?" It is our task and pleasure to learn, and many the adventures into which we are led thereby.

One day the vanishing trail crosses an open field, and the only sign of the true path is the wheel ruts, deep worn in the sod. When all other traces have been effaced, these remain. And yet they serve in a curious manner to obstruct the passage, for in the broken ground of the ruts the seeds of birch and pine find readier lodgment than elsewhere, with the result that lusty sprouts spring up in the track itself, when the remaining field is clear.

At another time we find ourselves involved in such a tangle of young birches that only consummate skill in driving brings us through. Bending to earth the younger saplings, grazing a stout tree on the right, barely missing a huge stump on the left, we emerge at last, and see below us a hill steep as a barn roof. Then it is necessary to remove the horse from the shafts and lead him down. A pole is thrust through the rear wheels, a rope fastened to the rear axle, and the carriage lowered by hand.

Again, we may wander in groves of shadowy evergreens, as yet untouched by the devouring portable sawmill. Dead limbs fallen across the road snap as we pass over, and startle a meditative rabbit chewing wintergreen leaves beneath the ferns. Not infrequently we are halted suddenly in the back yard of an amazed and indignant farmer, who must know where we