be called a "highway." The fee would remain with the several
proprietors through whose lands it passed; and, if travel should
forsake it for a more eligible route, it would be discontinued, and
the road-track, enclosed in the fields to which it originally
belonged, be obliterated by the plough. Many of the "highways," by
which the farmers passed over each other's lands to get to the
meeting-house or out to public roads, in 1692, have thus disappeared,
while some have hardened into permanent public roads used to this day.
When thus fully and finally established, it became a "town road," and
if leading some distance into the interior, and through other towns,
was called a "country road." The early name of "path" continued some
time in use long after it had got to be worthy of a more pretentious
title. The old "Boston Path," by which the country was originally
penetrated, long retained that name. It ran through the southern and
western part of Salem Village by the Gardners, Popes, Goodales,
Flints, Needhams, Swinnertons, Houltons, and so on towards Ipswich and
Newbury.

On the 30th of September, 1648, Governor Winthrop, writing to his son
John, says "they are well at Salem, and your uncle is now beginning to
distil. Mr. Endicott hath found a copper mine in his own ground. Mr.
Leader hath tried it. The furnace runs eight tons per week, and their
bar iron is as good as Spanish." Whatever may be thought by some of
the logic which infers that "all is well" in Salem, because they are
beginning "to distil;" and however little has, as yet, resulted here
from the discovery of copper-mines, or the manufacture of iron, the
foregoing extract shows the zeal and enthusiasm with which the
wealthier settlers were applying themselves to the development of the
capabilities of the country.