The things we do!

They travel thousands of miles,
have their annual migrations backwards and forwards, and never miss the
best and shortest route. These are the first engineers to lay out a road
in a new country; the Indians follow them, and hence a buffalo road
becomes a warpath. The first white hunters follow the same trails in
pursuing their game; and after that the buffalo road becomes the wagon
road of the white man, and finally the macadamized road or railroad of the
scientific man." [Footnote: Speech on a bill for the construction of a
highway to the Pacific, December 16, 1850.]
A hunter of wild sheep in the Rocky Mountains following their trails
wonders if they were made a year, five, or ten years ago, and is told by
the scientist at his side that they may have been sixteen thousand years
old, so long have these first engineers been at work. In some places of
Europe, I am told, their fellow engineers, longer in the practice of their
profession, have actually worn paths in the rocks by their cushioned feet.


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