------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER ELEVENTH _AN INDIAN TRAIL_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was a strange coincidence. A farmer living near by employed an Indian from the school at Carlisle, and now that the work of the summer was over, this taciturn youth walked daily over a hill to a school-house more than a mile away, and the path leading to it was an Indian trail. Not long since I met the lad on this very path returning from school, and when he passed I stood by an old oak and watched him until lost among the trees, walking where centuries ago his people had walked when going from the mountain village and rock shelters along an inland creek to the distant town by the river. As you looked about from the old oak there was no public road or house in sight; nothing but trees and bushes, huge rocks, and one curious jutting ledge that tradition holds is a veritable relic of prehistoric time,—a place where council fires were lit and midnight meetings held. Whether tradition is true or not, the place was a fitting one whereat to tarry and fall a-thinking. Happy, indeed, could the old oak have spoken. Many a public road of recent date has been built on the line of an old trail, as many a town and even city have replaced Indian villages; but take the long-settled regions generally, the ancient landmarks are all gone, and a stray potsherd or flint arrow-point in the fields is all that is left to recall the days of the dusky aborigines. Only in the rough, rocky, irreclaimable hills are we likely now to be successful, if such traces as a trail are sought for. It was so here. Bald-top Hill is of little use to the white man except for the firewood that grows upon its sides and the scattered game that still linger in its thickets. As seen from the nearest road, not far off, there is nothing now to suggest that an Indian ever clambered about it. The undergrowth hides every trace of the surface; but after the leaves drop and a light snow has fallen, a curious white line can be traced from the base of the summit; this is the old trail. It is a narrow path, but for so long a time had it been used by the Indians that, when once pointed out, it can still be followed without difficulty. It leads now from one little intervale to another: from farmer A to farmer B; but originally it was part of their long highway leading from Philadelphia to Easton, perhaps. It matters not. Enough to know that then, as now, there were towns almost wherever there was land fit for dwellings, and paths that led from one to the other. It is clear that the Indians knew the whole country well. The routes they finally chose resulted from long experience, and were as direct as the nature of the ground made possible.