I have an “app” on my iPhone called Star Walk that is pretty amazing. If you allow it to locate your position you can face the screen of the phone in any direction, and it will present to you a detailed map of the night sky within the field of the screen. For example, as I stand on the banks of the Thames River in New London, Connecticut and look across to the sky over the eastern shore I can see a very bright object near the moon. I know it is a planet, but which one? I place the phone between my face and the object in the sky, and the screen indicates that the bright object in that area is the planet Jupiter. A simple click on the image of Jupiter, and I can find all the information I desire about the largest planet in our solar system.  I attract a bit of attention because of my eccentric behavior, but a couple of kids who boldly ask what I am doing are rewarded for their curiosity and are so impressed they want to download the app onto their own phones.

        Although it is hard to see because of the light pollution generated by the lights of New London and the surrounding area, the star map on the iPhone also indicates that the Milky Way passes overhead in what from Earth looks like an east to west direction. The Romans referred to the hazy, milky streak of stars that cross the night sky as La Via Lactea, the Milky Way, and it was used as a guide especially by travelers heading west across the Iberian peninsula to what was believed to be the western most point in Europe, Cape Finisterre, the end of the world.

        This route across Northern Spain is thought to have originally been an ancient trade route or perhaps even to have had a pre-Christian religious significance (perhaps a voyage to the ‘end of the world’), but by the Middle Ages it was the primary path of one of the three major pilgrimage trails in Europe, the Way of Saint James (or, in France Le Chemin de Saint-Jacques and El Camino de Santiago in Spain). This pilgrimage trail to the cathedral at Santiago in Galicia achieved prominence as a place to visit in order to earn plenary indulgences (essentially time off for good behavior from temporal punishment for sins committed by the pilgrim) as a result of political disputes that rendered the pilgrimage to Rome or Jerusalem difficult, if not impossible, to travel. The ancient road to Santiago, with some pilgrims continuing on to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean at the tip of Cape Finisterre, is also known as the Milky Way, or La Voie Lactée in French, and was the subject of a 1969 movie of the same name by the Spanish film director Luis Bunuel. Bunuel’s  satirical film is ostensibly about the travels of two “hobos” along the trail who meet various characters discussing and disputing religious doctrine, often violently. The true purpose of the film is to present to the viewer various doctrinal disputes that occurred during the long history of the Catholic Church exactly as they were written in order to show the absurdity of the arguments that often lead to the violent crushing of “heretics” by the winning side.

        Buñuel would have loved Alexander Hamilton’s diary for its amused mocking tone regarding the various religious arguments that dogged him everywhere he traveled but especially in Connecticut. As early as 1656 the government of the colony passed laws ordering towns not to admit “loathsome Hereticks, whether Quakers, Ranters, Adamites or some other like them,” and for the first hundred years of the Connecticut Colony “upon the subject of religion, no differences of opinion would be tolerated.”(1)  But Hamilton traveled through New England during a period of renewed religious ferment known as the First Great Awakening, when the writing and preaching of people like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield led to a surge in religious spirit, especially among women and the younger sons who stood to inherit little from their parents, who rebelled against ideas of duty and respect for the traditional order. The congregations of many churches split into two groups: the “Old Lights” and the so-called “New Lights” who rejected the staid unemotional preaching of the “Old Lights” in favor of a more emotional style and a more fervent religious experience. Not coincidentally, the rise of the New Lights was also a rejection of the established social order by those who stood to lose the most under the established social and religious structure of New England: women, blacks, younger sons, and the landless or poor. 

        The New Lights were often thunderously denounced by Old Light ministers. Richard Bushman, in his history of eighteenth-century Connecticut,  From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765, quotes from one Old Light sermon: “if there should be a Religion Advanced which is inimical to civil Authority and that sets people a praying against, and Blaspheming the Rulers... and that (believing) they have immediate Warrant for from God; why then, they will be lawless and disobedient to lawful Authority, under Colour of Obedience to God.” (2) Hamilton followed in the footsteps of the itinerant New Light preacher George Whitefield, who passed through Connecticut in 1740 and again in 1745, often preaching outdoors to large crowds. Some of Whitefield’s “more extravagant disciples” became even more zealous than their mentor. James Davenport, in contrast to John Winthrop, Jr. whom we encountered in the last entry, was a firm believer in the rejection of temporal wealth and on March 6, 1743 had his followers gather symbols of worldliness such as expensive clothing and books deemed heretical, to burn them in the center of New London. (3)

    Hamilton arrived in New London a year after the great conflagration. As it was a Sunday and he was unable to travel owing to religious proscriptions on travel on the Sabbath, he spent the day in the company of various acquaintances who regaled him with stories of the fight between the various groups. Hamilton was quite amused by the antics of Davenport, and he relates a story told to him by Deacon Timothy Green of the bonfire. He describes the enthusiasm of the crowd for burning every worldly possession, including Davenport’s “plush breaches” until, as he puts it, “this bone fire was happily prevented by one more moderate than the rest, who found means to perswade them that making such a sacrifice was not necessary for their salvation, which was lucky for Davenport who, had fire been put to the pile, would have been obliged to strutt about bare-arsed, for the devil another pair of breeches had he but these same old plush ones which were going to be offerred up as an expiatory sacrifice.” (4)

        As he traveled westward Hamilton described other encounters with both New and Old Lights which tell us quite a bit about the time and place in which he was traveling. I will come back to these stories as they become relevant to the time and place I am traveling.  I will also return to the topic of the Milky Way again, as well as Buñuel’s film of the pilgrimage route, because there are many parallels between the two routes both from a religious and historical perspective and from a personal point of view. My interest in walking this route west along the New England coast has much to do with my interest in the Santiago trail, although less to do with religion than with the idea of pilgrimage and the underlying philosophical and even biological motivations that underlay the superficial religious symbolism attached to them.  In short, the walk along the Post Road is about more than mere exercise or tourism, although both figured in my decision to take to this road. I am interested in more than merely peeling back the layers of the historical onion, more  than observing the landscapes of southern New England, both natural and man-made, more than describing the demographic and cultural composition of the various towns and cities through which I pass. I am interested in probing the question of why I (or any pilgrim or traveler) would leave the safety of my home to venture out into the unknown, to risk potential harm and to disrupt the reassuring patterns of my life to head out to my own personal Finisterre, my own metaphorical end of the world.

*****

After some hours spent reading old histories of the area in the New London Public Library I need a drink and some food. Hamilton would have enjoyed the friendly Dutch Tavern on quiet Green Street, just off State Street, the main street from the river to the Courthouse at the top of the hill.  I am instantly reassured by the half dozen patrons at the bar as well as the bartender and the cook, the couple that run the place, that this is definitely Red Sox territory, despite the fact that the guy next to me is reading the New York Post and turns out to be a Yankee fan.  The Dutch was patronized by Eugene O’Neill back in the early days of the repeal of Prohibition, as well as in the days before Prohibition (and perhaps during Prohibition) when it was known by its former incarnation the Oak.  It is exactly the kind of quiet, unassuming place that to me epitomizes what makes a city work, a place that both identifies with and represents the city yet doesn’t boast about it. No large banners on the building outside screaming “Visit the Historic Dutch Tavern, New London’s Cheers,”  just a red sign that says Dutch Tavern and a couple of neon beer signs for Miller and Budweiser (although you can get a Guiness or a Harpoon among other superior beers on tap, so why settle for Pissweiser?)

        Fortified by my burger and beer...wait that is not the kind of meal that is conducive to walking, time to get a quick pick-me-up, so over to the Bean and Leaf Cafe for a nice strong latte and a fresh-baked cookie. The barista and I get into a random conversation about Robert Mitchum (don’t ask), and it turns out he is an artist who is putting on a show the following weekend which recreates an absurdist version of a nineteenth-century natural history museum. His contribution involves creating prosthetic legs for a (fake) monkey that lost his legs in a battle with a giant squid (also fake, made of steel and suitably flattened to resemble a preserved dead squid), also on display in this cabinet of curiosities. I wish I was around for it because I  crack up just listening to him describe the exhibit.

        Sufficiently energized by my coffee and desert and the slightly insane rambling of my friend in the cafe, I head out into the drizzle and retrace my steps to the waterfront to continue my journey on the Post Road.  In this area lived the Pequot Indians at the time Winthrop first visited prior to founding New London. The Pequot, however, were latecomers to the area who arrived from the Hudson River valley probably in the fifteenth century and usurped territory occupied by the Niantic Indians.(5)  I previously encountered Niantics in Charlestown, Rhode Island. These were the “Eastern Niantic,” the eastern branch of two that were divided by the Pequot invasion. The second Western group of Niantic paid tribute to the Pequot and lived to the west in the area now known as East Lyme, roughly in the area of the present village of Niantic, CT.  The Niantic had a fishing camp in the southern part of what is now New London along the Thames. A path connecting the two Niantic camps extended across this area of southern Connecticut and was called the Nehantic or Niantic Way. This path eventually became a road, and it is this oldest road that I will trace to my destination today, the village of Niantic in East Lyme, six miles from New London. 

      

*****

        Birkett describes New London in 1750 as “One of the Chiefe ports in Connecticut,” and the connection to the sea is still strong.(6)  Across the bay in Groton is the Naval Submarine Base, New London, the home of the US Submarine fleet, while on the west bank of the Thames is the United States Coast Guard Academy. Also to be found in New London is the tall ship the USS Eagle as well as the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. The ferry to Long Island also departs from New London as does a ferry to Block Island. New London was a major whaling port, and many of the elegant buildings that line the streets are the product of the money derived from whaling in the nineteenth century. Like all seaports in New England however, New London is economically depressed. As I walk the lovely streets I see obvious signs of a city that is down on its luck: relief centers for homeless and drug addicted people, lots of empty commercial space, quiet streets in the heart of the city in the middle of the day. It is a city with great potential and perhaps is experiencing a resurgence as artists flow in, but it has a ways to go before it will be vibrant as it clearly was in Birkett or Hamilton’s day, or even in the time of  Sarah Kemble Knight who was favorably impressed by New London, enough to move there in 1712 from Boston. It was not easy to please Madam Knight as we have seen, but she “stayed a day longer than I intended by the commands of the Honorable Governor Winthrop to stay and take supper with him whose wonderfull civility I may not omitt.” (7)

        New London in 1774 was the fourth largest town in Connecticut with a population of almost 6,000 inhabitants. (8)   Despite being burned by British troops under the guidance of the traitor Benedict Arnold (who, people in New London love pointing out, was from Norwich, their chief rival in New London County), New London recovered to become the twentieth largest urban place in the Untied States according to the US Census of 1800.  Slowly New London was passed by other towns in size, and by the year 2000, only 26,000 people called New London home, 13,000 fewer inhabitants than Groton across the river Thames.

        To be fair, New London is all of 5.54 square miles in area, so it is four times more densely populated than Groton and is the most densely populated place I have visited since Newport, Rhode Island, another formerly grand seaport.  And New London actually feels like a city; there are grand buildings like the Richardsonian Union Station, narrow alleys, a few tall buildings, and the population is much more heterogeneous than that of any of the towns I have walked through in the last fifty miles. Non-Hispanic Whites make up 54.6% of the population, according to the 2000 census, a far smaller proportion than any town since Providence. Almost all the towns through which I have passed have had a white population in excess of 90%. Only Boston and Providence have had fewer whites than New London thus far on my travels.

          New London is still in that no man’s land between the Boston and New York Metropolitan areas, and makes up its own metropolitan statistical area, the New London-Norwich MSA, which is essentially New London County, with a population of 266,000. My informal survey of the patrons of the Dutch Tavern, however, indicates that the influence of Boston does extend here as it is still essentially Red Sox territory.

    So I still have a ways to go before I can truly start to think about how many miles are left to walk rather than how many miles I have traveled.  There is a distance marker about fifty yards from the tee box on the first fairway at Franklin Park Golf Course near my house in Jamaica Plain that indicates the distance to the flag. It says “Just hit it.” I am still in the “Just hit it” stage.

*****

        I head down Bank Street, quiet in the day but boisterous by night with the cacophony that accompanies drinking districts the world over. Bars fill the lower floors of the nineteenth-century buildings that line what was once, according to Birkett “the One street about a mile long by the riverside, altho’ upon the bank which is of a moderate height...(which) affords a fine prospect over the river and the adjacent country.” (9) Winthrop founded the town in 1646 upon the remains of a Pequot village he referred to as Naumeag in his diary, and it is the old trails that still remain from the time of Naumeag that I follow out of town. Bank Street quickly gives way to a less interesting area of modern offices, gas stations, drug stores, and empty lots. I follow the old road as it curves west and uphill away from the river.  The outskirts of New London are uninspiring, made up of slightly rundown triple deckers and old apartment buildings, peppered with an occasional Victorian house that needs some renovation.  In a very short while I leave tiny New London and enter Waterford, a town that was part of New London until 1801, when 33 square miles was set off from the mother town. 19,000 people call Waterford home as do many retail establishments. The first mile in Waterford is not any different from the last mile in New London; lots of strip malls and slightly run-down housing.

        The wife of George Whitefield spent the night at Minor’s Tavern in August 1745 on the way to meet her husband who was preaching in Old Lyme.(10)  Minor’s was located at the intersection of Clark Lane and Boston Post Road, the name Bank Street took when it passed into Waterford from New London. (11)  Today the area is the home of the Waterford Shopping Plaza and is about as commercial an area as I have seen on the post road, with no trace at all of the buildings that once stood here in the eighteenth century. Things get appreciably nicer a few hundred yards down the road. The road splits at a pretty park called Civic Triangle, directly opposite Waterford High School, Boston Post Road (Route 1) heading right and Rope Ferry Road bordering the Civic Triangle on the left. Here is another instance where the temptation to follow Boston Post Road is strong but the actual road traveled by Hamilton, Birkett, and countless others was the curiously named Rope Ferry Road. As the name implies there is a crossing ahead, this time of the Niantic “River,” which was accomplished by means of a ferry that crossed a small but treacherous channel called the Gutt. Hamilton referred to “Niantic Ferry” as “an odd kind of ferry, the passage across it not being above 50 paces wide, and yet the inlett of water here from the Sound is near three quarters of a mile broad. This is occasioned by a long narrow point or promontory of hard sand and rock, att its broadest not above 12 paces over, which runs out from the western towards the eastern shore of this inlett and is above a half mile long, so leaves but a small gutt where the tide runs very rapid and fierce. The skeow that crosses here goes by a rope which is fixed to a stake att each side of the Gutt, and this skeow is fastened to the main rope by an iron ring which slides upon it, else the rapidity of the tide would carry skeow and passengers all away.” (12) Alas, for the adventurous there is only a bridge across the Gutt today, although the views of the Sound and the bay are fantastic and the Gutt is still there. The promontory that Hamilton referred to is slightly wider than it used to be and not only handles the traffic of Route 156 (Rope Ferry Road) but also the Amtrak train line from Boston to New York. On the shore side of the tracks Amtrak is currently making repairs to the line but the outline of a future shoreline boardwalk is clearly discernible. The train ride through this section of Connecticut is one of the most scenic rides you will find, as the train runs along the shore for much of its route.

        The ferry was established in 1720 along with improvements to the Nehantic Way which resulted in the creation of the Lower, or Rope Ferry Road. (13)  Earlier travelers such as Knight might have traveled to the head of Niantic Bay and thus avoided the Gutt, but it is unclear exactly what Knight did, although she did complain that “the Rodes all along this way are very bad, Incumbred with Rocks and mountainos passages, wch were very disagreeable to my tired carcass.”(14)  Most of the old roads that she might have followed run almost exactly along the current path of Interstate 95, thus making my decision to ignore Knight and follow Hamilton seem wise. It is certainly a pretty walk through the historic center of Waterford, Jordan Village.  Unfortunately the sidewalk ends shortly after I pass through the village and the hilly (not exactly “montainous”), narrow street becomes a little difficult to negotiate as there is a good deal of traffic and it is still drizzling. I stick to the very narrow shoulder and find a couple of roads that let me off the main road for a minute or two at a time, until I reach an area called Millstone.  Here the sidewalk returns, I climb a big hill, the sun finally comes out and, as I reach the summit of the hill, I get a sweeping view of Niantic Bay, Long Island Sound, Long Island across the sound, the Gutt down below at the bottom of the hill, and the bridge over the Gutt.  To my left is a road that leads to the Dominion Millstone Power Station, which I later discover is a nuclear power plant.  Millstone once had quarries which provided the stone for the base of the Statue of Liberty, so I will see a little part of Waterford again at the very end of my journey. (15)

        As the sun sets over Niantic Bay, which is so wide it resembles a large lake from my vantage point, I head downhill to the bridge, a modern version of the one that replaced the Rope Ferry in 1796. A train passes, joggers run along the path on the spit of land that nearly cuts the bay off from the sea, I descend onto the sweeping promontory and head into Niantic to find a place to eat and sleep. The moon rises in the east, and I pull out my iPhone to study the stars. Google Maps is more helpful in directing me to my destination but in my mind I am following the Milky Way.