Page:An Old English Home and Its Dependencies.djvu/307

Rh and political reformers. Originally, when men were nomads, the land belonged to nobody—but when tillage began, then at once the marking out of fields became a necessity—and with the marking came proprietorship. In France and Germany, where there are no hedges, there the properties are divided by an imaginary line drawn between two stone pegs; and as fields get divided and subdivided by inheritance, the number of these marks or pegs increases. In order to distinguish his boundaries, a proprietor sometimes cut the outline of his foot on a slab, or took the further pains with a hammer and chisel to scoop it out. In course of time the significance of these foot imprints in stone was completely forgotten, and as they are found all the world over, the vulgar began to regard them with awe, and create legends to account for their existence. When Robinson Crusoe lit upon the footprint in the wet sand on the shore, he had no rest till he discovered who had left it there. And so, when the peasantry came on these marks in stone, long after such marks had