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reached even from the rivers, the colonists were forced to depend more and more upon travel by land. Trails were widened into tote roads and bridle paths, and these in turn into carriage roads, until they grew into highways connecting towns with towns and colonies with colonies. The process of developing this vast system of pathways through the back country was slow, expensive, and very imperfect. Nothing but sheer necessity could have compelled men to drive these roads through the dense forests and tangled undergrowth, across marshes, and over rocky hills; nothing else could have made them endure the arduous and dangerous riding through "the howling wilderness, as the colonists themselves called it, particularly in the South and the back country, where the roads ran always through lonely woods. The menace of treacherous ground, falling trees, high river banks, and dangerous fords were real to every traveler. All the records of these early journeys refer to the ever present danger from the accidents and injuries of highway travel. In the South guides were particularly necessary, for to miss one's way was a harrowing and dangerous experience.

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But necessity won the day. Tremendous ad tances were made in the eighteenth century, when

ONE-HORSE CHAISE OF ABOUT 1780

In the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass. This is said to be the only chaise of the Revolutionary period in any museum.

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