were made by the men of your blood before they had heard of brick or of
stone or of iron or of written laws.

I wonder that more men do not set out to follow, let us say, the
Fosse-Way. There it runs right across Western England from the
south-west to the north-east in a line direct yet sinuous, characters
which are the very essence of a savage trail. It is a modern road for
many miles, and you are tramping, let us say, along the Cotswold on a
hard metalled modern English highway, with milestones and notices from
the County Council telling you that the culverts will not bear a
steam-engine, if so be you were to travel on one. Then suddenly this
road comes up against a cross-road and apparently ceases, making what
map draughtsmen call a "T"; but right in the same line you see a gate,
and beyond it a farm lane, and so you follow. You come to a spinney
where a ride has been cut through by the woodreeve, and it is all in the
same line. The Fosse-Way turns into a little path, but you are still on
it; it curves over a marshy brook-valley, picking out the firm land, and
as you go you see old stones put there heaven knows how many (or how
few) generations ago--or perhaps yesterday, for the tradition remains,
and the country-folk strengthen their wet lands as they have
strengthened them all these thousands of years; you climb up out of that
depression, you get you over a stile, and there you are again upon a
lane. You follow that lane, and once more it stops dead. This time there
is a field before you. No right of way, no trace of a path, nothing but
grass rounded into those parallel ridges which mark the modern decay of
the corn lands and pasture--alas!--taking the place of ploughing. Now
your pleasure comes in casting about for the trail; you look back along
the line of the Way; you look forward in the same line till you find
some indication, a boundary between two parishes, perhaps upon your map,
or two or three quarries set together, or some other sign, and very soon