It was not an easy task that these two surveyors had undertaken to do. A great part of the land was still wild and unbroken. Savages and wild beasts lurked in the forests. At night, as they sat beside their camp fires, they could hear the long cry of the catamounts off in the wood. Often an Indian warrior would glide out from the thickets, and stand watching their work, and then glide away again, silent as a shadow. The savages seemed friendly, and indeed some of them went with the white men as guides, but there was no knowing when they would turn against the white men. At one time, word was brought to Mason and Dixon that the Indians meant to attack their camp, and twenty-six of their workmen left, and made their way back to safety. All work stopped for a while. Then fresh men came out to take their places, and the chopping and surveying went on. Great trees were cut down and rocks were rolled from their beds. A path eight yards wide was made through the wilderness, and in this “vistoe” as they called it, stones were set up to mark the boundary line. Some of the stones had Penn’s coat-of-arms carved on them; some were carved upon one side with “P” for Pennsylvania, and on the other with “M” for Maryland. Months slipped by, years passed, and still the work was not finished. Then one day the surveyors came to a path through the forest that crossed the “vistoe” they were marking out. It was a path worn by the passing of many Indian feet. Here the savages who were acting as their guides stopped. “It is not the will of the Six Nations[39] that you should go further,” they said. The white men were very anxious to finish the line. They had been working on it for over four years, and it needed thirty-six more miles to complete it, but the Indians would guide them no further. “It is not the will of the Six Nations,” they repeated. The white men were afraid to push on further without permission. They were afraid they would be massacred, so they were obliged to turn back leaving the line incompleted, and many, many years passed by before that line was finally finished. But Mason and Dixon’s line[40] still marks the boundaries between the three States of Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and here and there a stone still stands where they set it up in their “vistoe,” more than a hundred and fifty years ago. One stone is preserved in the rooms of the Delaware Historical Society, at Tenth and Market streets, in Wilmington. The lines they marked out were those between Pennsylvania on the north, and Delaware and Maryland on the south, and between Maryland and Delaware[41] and they did their work so well that it has never had to be done again. [Illustration: —A Stone marker— Mason & Dixon Line 1763-1767] NOTES [36] Now New Castle. [37] Wilmington. [38] The first settlement in Maryland. [39] The Six Nations were the tribes of Indians inhabiting that region.