Home Life in Colonial Days

by Alice Morse Earle

The French governor and missionaries all saw and admired these birch-bark canoes. Father Charlevoix wrote a beautiful and vivid description of them. All the early travellers noted their ticklish balance. Wood, writing in 1634, said, "In these cockling fly-boats an Englishman can scarce sit without a fearful tottering," and Madam Knights a century later said in her vivid English of a trip in one:—

"The Cannoo was very small and shallow, which greatly terrify'd me and caused me to be very circumspect, sitting with my hands fast on each side, my eyes steady, not daring so much as to lodge my tongue a hair's bredth more on one side of my mouth than tother, nor so much 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 rolled from inland plantations to the river or bay side; sometimes the hogsheads were simply rolled by human propulsion, not dragged on these roads.

The broader rivers soon had canoe-ferries. The first regular Massachusetts ferry from Charlestown to Boston was in 1639. It carried passengers for threepence apiece. From Chelsea to Boston was fourpence. In 1636 the Cambridge ferryman charged but half a penny, as so many wished to attend the Thursday lecture in the Boston churches. We learn from the Massachusetts Laws that often a rider had to let his horse cross by swimming over, being guided from the ferry-boat; he then paid no ferriage for the horse. After wheeled vehicles were used, these ferries were not large enough to carry them properly. Often the carriage had to be taken apart, or towed over, while the horse had his fore feet in one canoe-ferry and his hind feet in another, the two canoes being lashed together. The rope-ferry lingered till our own day, and was ever a picturesque sight on the river. As soon as roads were built there were, of course, bridges and cart-ways, but these were only between the closely neighboring towns. Usually the bridges were merely "horse-bridges" with a railing on but one side.

After the period of walking and canoe-riding had had its day, nearly all land travel for a century was on horseback, just as it was in England at that date. In 1672 there were only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain; and a man wrote a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel. Boston then had one private coach. Women and children usually rode seated on a pillion behind a man. A pillion was a padded cushion with straps which sometimes had on one side a sort of platform-stirrup. One way of progress which would help four persons ride part of their journey was what was called the ride-and-tie system. Two of the four persons who were travelling started on their road on foot; two mounted on the saddle and pillion, rode about a mile, dismounted, tied the horse, and walked on. When the two who had started on foot reached the waiting horse, they mounted, rode on past the other couple for a mile or so, dismounted, tied, and walked on; and so on. It was also a universal and courteous as it was a pleasant custom for friends to ride out on the road a few miles with any departing guest or friend, and then bid them God speed agatewards.