CHAPTER XI.
WHEN WE WALKED THE TOWN LINES It was some time the following week, I think, that the old Squire looked across to us at the breakfast table and said, "Boys, don't you want to walk the town lines for me?
I think I shall let you do it this time--and have the fee," he added, smiling.
The old gentleman was one of the selectmen of the town that year; and an old law, or municipal regulation, required that one or more of the selectmen should walk the town lines--follow round the town boundaries on foot--once a year, to see that the people of adjoining towns, or others, were not trespassing.

The practice of walking the town lines is now almost or quite obsolete, but it was a needed precaution when inhabitants were few and when the thirty-six square miles of a township consisted mostly of forest.

At this time the southern half of our town was already taken up in farms, but the northern part was still in forest lots.

The selectmen usually walked the north lines only.
When the state domain, almost all dense forest, was first surveyed, the land was laid off in ranges, so-called, and tiers of lots.

The various grants of land to persons for public services were also surveyed in a similar manner and the corners and lines established by means of stakes and stones, and of blazed trees.