towns where markets could be found for the sale of such commodities as the farmer and his family had produced. In winter the roads of the middle and northern colonies. were no longer seas of mud with archipelagos of stumps, but were made smooth and firm with a pavement spread upon them from the sky. The smaller streams and rivers, too, were turned to highways of ice and were often used. Sleighs of various crude and simple types appeared at an early date, and by the year 1700 were in general use. One of the commonest varieties of these vehicles for winter

16.-American colonial sleds were generally called either pungs or pods. though the Canadian cariole was also used. The pungs and pods ordinarily had an open space between the bed of the sled and its runners. Each American type also had a shelf-like extension of the floor bevond its sides for its whole length. Horse-drawn sleds preferred to travel on the smooth surfaces of frozen streams when possible.

travel was an idea adopted' from Canada. The Canadians spoke of it as a cariole, but the people of New England, who have always preferred to use home-made names for

1 With alterations.

things, called a sleigh either a pung or a pod, and found it just as serviceable. They were more concerned with features of utility than with melodious nomenclature. A pung was drawn by two horses; a pod by one. When loaded and equipped for a long journey over the snows a pung must have been an interesting spectacle. In the body of the vehicle sat the farmer's wife, with maybe a child or two, all of them bundled up with coats, blankets, hoods, mittens and mufflers against the sharp air. Around them were heaped the things they had prepared for sale

cheeses, dried herbs, bundles of knitted stockings and mittens, parcels of vegetables, mysterious jugs, flax, and all those other primitive commodities of domestic growth or manufacture until the whole outfit looked like a miniature mountain on runners. As for the man himself, he trotted alongside. There was no room for him on board. And to the side of every departing pung, as the chiefest part of its equipment for a journey, there was securely tied a huge round chunk of frozen porridge (bean porridge, of course) and a hatchet with which to chop off a chunk of it when any of the travellers might feel the need of nourishment.

No doubt this curious commissary department of an early New England sleigh throws a certain light on that famous old nursery rhyme that runs:

"Bean porridge hot; bean porridge cold;

Bean porridge in the pot, nine days old."

Preliminary to every such trip, and a few days before it, the housewife would cook a big pot of porridge and then, setting it out-of-doors in the kettle, would allow it to ripen and freeze while awaiting the time for the journey to begin. There is no present way of finding out whether the epicures of that period considered nine days

as the most appetizing age for winter bean porridge, but of one thing we may be sure; it was very, very cold.

For short winter trips, or whenever the snow was too soft or deep for horses, snow-shoes were used, and the traveller carried a staff at the bottom of which was fixed a United States

17.-Winter travel in the northern colonies was performed on foot, or in sleds drawn by dogs or horses. The New England winter pedestrian, in addition to his snow-shoes, was equipped with a pole having a large wooden disc at its bottom for extra support.

wide, flat piece of wood, usually round or oval in shape, as an additional support. Still another means of travel during the winter season was the dog-sled. This method of conveyance was copied from a similar usage of the Indians, who in times of hostility sometimes also employed sleds for transporting their baggage or feeble captives through the wilderness. The dog-sleds were small and simple affairs, consisting of a flat base of pine or spruce about two feet wide, upcurved in front, and with room for but one person to seat himself. From two to six

dogs constituted a team. Although the dog-sled never came into widespread use at any one time or in any given locality, except in the far North and Northwest, it nevertheless persisted in various forms as a vehicle of travel in America for perhaps two hundred years, and is still used in Alaska and Canada.

The establishment of the town of Philadelphia and its rapid growth had exerted a decided influence on the development of land travel in the colonies. By 1690 the place consisted of some six or eight hundred houses, people were journeying to it from all other parts of the country, and there was no longer any doubt that it was on its way toward an assured greatness. Three chief centers of social and commercial activity - New York, the Massachusetts towns and the settlements on the Delaware then existed in the North, and it was inevitable that they should soon become linked by definite and continuous land routes of travel. The Dutch, who had previously held that part of New Jersey between Amboy on New York Bay and the Delaware River, abandoned the region. about the year 1675. At that time it was still a wilderness traversed only by Indian paths and but seldom crossed by white men. The main trail of the aborigines extended through the territory from Elizabethport, near New York Bay, and proceeding by way of the future settlements of New Brunswick and Trenton, finally reached the Delaware River. Such, then, was the route by which the colonists travelled overland between New York and Philadelphia in 1675. They made the journey on foot if they went at all, and under ordinary circumstances were from three to five days on the road.

It was this path of the Indians which was adopted as the best line for a steam railroad across New Jersey a hun

dred and sixty years afterward, and it was exactly above the same old historic travel route, two hundred and thirtyfive years afterward, that a flying-man made the first flight on schedule time ever performed. On that occasion an aeroplane was driven in an uninterrupted journey from New York to Philadelphia in an hour and fifty minutes as announced in advance, or five minutes faster than the running time of the swiftest regular railroad train between the two cities. Such things, however, did not abide within the philosophy of the red men. To them belongs the credit of pointing out the best paths, but we use the information in our own peculiar way. They went beneath the trees. We can go above.

By about the year 1682 the people of the Delaware River towns were beginning to open short roads between their various settlements, and the roads were gradually followed by local vehicle traffic for small distances. The few wagons or carts were very crude and awkward, had immensely wide wheels, and were most used in going to previously arranged gatherings that were sure to be attended by considerable numbers of people. The inhabitants of Burlington, for example, held fairs at stated intervals, to which the inhabitants of other settlements travelled in order to buy or exchange commodities or to visit friends and relatives.

Little by little the roads in all settled parts of the colonies were extended by the coöperation of communities and through individual labor, until in a few years continuous horseback journeys between Boston and Philadelphia were possible with comparative ease. But since all intending travellers did not own horses it often happened that a party of four would set out for a common destina

1 Hamilton's flight of June 13, 1910.