Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/166

ball bearings of the glacier serve as the enduring monument of the pioneer. And in these we have the most lasting one that he could raise to himself. In the passing of enough centuries the slow heaving of frost and subsidence of thaw may throw out of alignment the carefully laid old stone walls. Nature herself in her own good time will throw down and scatter these tables of stone in which the early settlers wrote their laws of the fields. New owners will change those laws and use the stones for the foundations of other enterprises and thus in time will pass these monuments to the memories of the earliest occupants. It is not so with the old wells. They may fall into disuse, be covered over and filled in and forgotten. But the carefully laid cylinders of stone that enclosed them will remain out of reach of frost, untouched by man through indefinite centuries. Thirty, fifty, in some instances sixty and more feet beneath the surface they lie, and the man of a thousand years hence will find these memorials of early occupancy intact if he will but dig in the right place for them. The old well is the first settler's most enduring monument. I fancy the