THE BAY-PATH.
"The Bay-Path became better marked from year to year as settlements began to string themselves upon it as upon a thread. Every year the footsteps of those who trod it hurried more and more until, at last, wheels began to be heard upon it—heavy carts creaking with merchandise. A century passed away and the wilderness had retired. There was a constant roll along the Bay-Path. The finest of the wheat and the fattest of the flocks and herds were transported to the Bay, whose young commerce had already begun to whiten the coast.
"The dreamy years passed by, and then came the furious stagecoach, traveling night and day—splashing the mud, brushing up the dust, dashing up to inns, and curving more slowly up to post-offices. The journey was reduced to a day. And then—miracle of miracles—came the railway and the locomotive. The journey of a day is reduced to three hours."
CHAPTER II.
BY WATER.
When the Virginia colonists reached the shores of America, they sailed up the James River until they found a peninsula extending into the river and there they built Jamestown. When the Pilgrims completed their explorations of the shores of Cape Cod Bay, they chose the harbor of Plymouth as the best situation for their colony. Lord Baltimore established the Maryland colony at St. Mary's on an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. The Dutch founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The first settlements in each of the colonies were made on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, or but a few miles up large rivers. Why? The colonists had come to this new world in European vessels which could only bring them to the shore. Here they chose the most convenient place and built their town.