But the squirrels were the first surveyors of these tracks.  The bears and wolves are the engineers, who change the early paths to suit their special convenience.

By and by the Indian hunter comes to follow the wild game.  He, too, takes the easiest trail, the path of least resistance; and he follows the track to the spring that the deer have made, and he drinks there.  He is an animal as they are, and he satisfies his animal wants according to the same law that governs them.

After generations of hunters, Indians, and then white men, there comes a man on horseback looking for a house to live in.  He, too, follows along the easiest paths and stops at the spring; and near by he finds the place he is looking for.  Soon he returns, driving before him herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, which spread over the grassy glades to feed.  But everywhere they take the easiest place, the old paths, from the shady tree to the flowing spring.  After awhile the hillside is plainly marked with these sheep trails.  You can see them now whenever you go into the country, on every hillside.

Soon there are neighbors who build their homes in the next valley, and a good path must be made between the different houses.

A few days’ work spent in moving the largest stones, in cutting down trees, and in levelling off a few steep slopes, makes a trail along which you can gallop your horse.

Things move fast now,—­history begins to be made quickly as soon as man takes a hand in it.  Soon the trail is not enough:  it must be widened so that a wagon-load of boards for a new house can be carried in (for the settler has found a wife).  After the first cart-track is made to carry the boards and shingles in, a better road will be needed to haul firewood and grain out (for the wants of the new family have increased, and things must be bought in the neighboring village with money, and money can only be had by selling the products of the farm).  By and by the neighborhood is so well inhabited that it is to the advantage of the villages all around it to have good and safe and easy roads there; and the road is declared a public one, and it is regularly kept in repair and improved at the public expense.  Do not forget the squirrels of long ago.  They were the projectors of this road.  Their successors use it now,—­men and squirrels alike,—­and stop at the spring to drink, and under the huge oaks to rest.

A few years more, and it becomes to the advantage of all to have a railway through the valley and over the hillside.  Then a young surveyor, just graduated from college, comes with his chain-men and flag-men, and finds that the squirrels, and bears, and hunters, and all the rest have picked out the easiest way for him long centuries ago.  He makes his map, and soon the chief enigneer and the president of the road drive along in a buggy with a pair of fast horses (frightening the little squirrels off their road-way and into their holes), and the route of the Bear Valley and Quercus Railway is finally selected, and here it is.  See! there comes a train along the track.  This is the way a railway route grew out of a squirrel path.  There are thousands of little steps, but you can trace them, or imagine them, as well as I can tell you.