A track or trail.

1

1829.  George promptly offered to take the trace through the woods to the bank of the Mississippi, where the physician resided.—T. Flint, ‘George Mason,’ p. 41 (Boston).

2

1833.  On either side was the thick forest, sometimes grown up with underbrush to the margin of the trace, and sometimes so open as to allow the eye to roam off to a considerable distance.—James Hall, ‘Legends of the West,’ p. 187 (Phila.). (Italics in the original.)

3

1834.  [He] took the meandering path, or, as they phrase it in those parts, the old trace, to the place of meeting and prayer.—W. G. Simms, ‘Guy Rivers,’ i. 138 (1837). (Italics in the original.)

4

1834.  What did they do but last night come quietly down upon our trace.—Id., i. 154.

5

1834.  The trace (as public roads are called in that region) had been rudely cut out by some of the earlier travellers through the Indian country, merely traced out—and hence, perhaps, the term—by a blaze, or white spot, made upon the trees by hewing from them the bark.—Id., ii. 62. (Italics in the original.)

6

1837.  You’ve as cl’ar and broad a trace before you as man and beast could make.—R. M. Bird, ‘Nick of the Woods,’ i. 42 (Lond.).

7

1837.  Leaving the broad buffalo-trace by which he descended the banks.—Id., ii. 247.

8

1854.  

          [The Indian] sees the hushed wood the city’s flare replace,
  The wounded turf heal o’er the railway’s trace,
And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights.
Lowell, ‘Indian-Summer Reverie.’    

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