The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1900-06-21
ENDURANCE OF THE TRAIL.
No Man Has Lived Long Enough to See One
ObIiterafed by Nature.

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| The city dweller or he who travels
over beaten ways, knows little of the
lastingness of the scars which the ele-
ments, or man, or his relations, the
animals, makes in the bosom of mother
earth. 1t is only the countryman, or
the traveller in wild regions, who learns
| of their permanence.
In the old fields of the South-now
growing up to young forests ana not
cultivated for many years-the foot OF
the quail shooters will often detect the
old burrows thrown up by the plow
when the land was planted in corn or
In cotton. In New England fields,
which the adjacent woodland is begin
ming to again embrace with its out
stretching arms of brush and saplings,
may still be seen the straight rows of
old hillocks, which point to crops OF
corn harvested many years ago.
| The dark green of the Alaska forests
| which cling so tenaciously to the gram
| lite sides of mountains rising sharply
| from the sea. is often broken by long
streaks of paler green deciduous trees,
which show perhaps centuries
ago-the snow slide plowed its clean
furrow through the vigorous spruces.
Out on the prairies, which now are
cattle ranges or wheat farms, long
lines of green worn deep in the soil
still run over the swells, converging at
water holes or at the crossing of the
streams-trails made in ancient times
by the herds of buffalo which were
then the sole cattle that roamed over
these limitless pastures.
In the main range, along the sides
of the mountains, which often rise Sc
steeply from the valleys level, pale
lines ascending gradually from the
stream bed to the mountains top zig
gag this way and that, which are ways
worn in the years that are past by the
climbing feet of elk, and deer, and
mountain sheep, whose light ano
springy hoofs, passing along the hill
side for generation after generation
have pushed aside the earth ant
stones, or worn hollows in the rocks
forming trails almost as enduring as
she solid rock itself.
No matter how long it may have
been disused, the trail always remains
unless it should happen that in this
place or in that. man has levelled i
off with his tools; but by making ;
wider east it can be taken up again
little beyond and followed on ant
m No man has ever lived lon;
enough to see an old trail disappear.
Even where it passes through thu
timber the trail lasts. Leaves ma.
fall into it and grass grow up at it
side. but it remains. Often the ranl
grass and weeds and brush on eithe
hand cover it up, and obscure it, yet i
the vegetation be cut away, there /
the trail as plain as ever, with it
worn stones, its roots whose bark ha
been rubbed off, and with its differen
color of the soil. showing that it ha
been finely powdered by the passag
Of many feet.
OF all the memorial of ancient time
In America, what is there that is NOR
permanent than the old trail? Th
skull and the leg bones wither an
fall to pieces, and are covered up an
disappear; the buffalo chip is devoure
by vegetation; the iron moulders an
crumbles; but the old trail will outlas
our time, and in the time to come GU
children shall speak Of its as a path
Forest and Stream.