Not only was Massachusetts Bay rapidly settled, but villages were built fifty and even a hundred miles from Boston. Providence, Newport, and Portsmouth were founded, forming the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor were established on the Connecticut. Dover and Portsmouth in New Hampshire, New Haven and Saybrook in Connecticut were built, and the village of Agawam, now Springfield, was founded. All of these new settlements needed some connection with Boston, or the Old Bay Colony as it was called. The roads were mere paths, however, and over them carriages could not have passed, if there had been any. In a story written by J. G. Holland, called "Bay-Path," he described life in Agawam more than two and a half centuries ago, and his description of the roads and travel in those days is well worth reading. "The principal communication with the Eastern settlement was by a path marked by trees a portion of the distance, and by slight clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was bridged, no hill graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through woods which bore the marks of centuries, and along the banks of streams that the seine had never dragged. The path was known as 'the Bay-Path,' or the path to the bay. "It was wonderful what a powerful interest was attached to the Bay-Path. It was the channel through which laws were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, and through which came long, loving letters and messages. That rough thread of soil, chopped by the blades of a hundred streams, was a bond that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibers of love and interest and hope and memory. "The Bay-Path was charmed ground--a precious passage--and during the spring, the summer, and the early autumn hardly a settler at Agawam went out of doors or changed his position in the fields, or looked up from his labor, or rested his oars upon the bosom of the river, without turning his eyes to the point at which that path opened from the brow of the wooded hill upon the East. And when some worn and wearied man came in sight upon his half-starved horse, or two or three pedestrians, bending beneath their packs and swinging their sturdy staves, were seen approaching, the village was astir from one end to the other. [Illustration: 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.