Even to go to one of the towns of Connecticut, the shore towns of the Boston Post Road, was an undertaking that called for serious preliminary study.  A New York paper, now before the writer, carries in its first column an advertisement of a new steamer, the “Fairfield,” plying between New York and Norwalk.  But in order to make use of its services, the traveller had to be at the pier at the foot of Market Street at six o’clock in the morning.  Upon the arrival at Norwalk stages were at hand for the convenience of such of the passengers who wished to travel on to Saugatuck, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Stratford, Milford, and other points.  The same column carried information for those who contemplated voyaging to Newport or Providence.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday the steamboats “Benjamin Franklin” (Capt.  E.S.  Bunker) and “President” (Capt.  R.S.  Bunker) left New York for those Rhode Island towns at five o’clock in the evening.

The Post Road to Boston of those days differed much from the Boston Post Road of the present; especially in its first stages going northward from New York.  There was no spacious Pelham Parkway skirting the waters of the Long Island Sound.  Before crossing the Harlem the road followed in a general way the Broadway trail.  Beyond the river it zigzagged in a northeasterly direction through Eastchester.  Not until the crossing of the Byram River transferred the road from New York to New England did it take on any resemblance to the trail of today, and even beyond, the town of Greenwich seems to have been neglected entirely.

Yet, in comparison, the East was developed.  It was the bold Sinbad turning his face resolutely and courageously towards the setting sun who experienced the real inconveniences and perils.  Nor, at first, did that mean the adventurous journey into the lands that were beyond the great Appalachian range.  The shining countenance of the unknown was nearer at hand.  It is just a matter of turning the clock back a hundred years.

From the windows of the apartment houses looking down on the Riverside Drive the Delaware River is just beyond the Jersey hills.  To journey there today does not even call for the study of time-tables.  Mr. Manhattan rises at the usual hour and eats his usual leisurely breakfast.  At, say, nine o’clock, he settles back behind the steering-wheel of his motor-car.  Crossing the Hudson by the Forty-second Street Ferry, he climbs the Weehawken slope, and swings westward over one of the uninviting turnpikes that disfigure the marshy land between the Passaic and the Hackensack.  Then he finds the real Jersey, the Jerseyman’s Jersey, of rolling hills, and historic memories of Washington’s Continental troops in ragged blue and buff.—­Morristown, with its superb estates, the stiff climb of Schooley’s Mountain, the descent along the wooded ravine, the road following the winding Musconetcong River through Washington, the clustered buildings of Lafayette College crowning the Pennsylvania shore, and in good time for luncheon Mr. Manhattan is over the bridge connecting Easton and Phillipsburg.