In America, in the east, it is the easiest thing in the world to take the wrong road. Moreover it is generally the most difficult thing to find out whether one is on the right road or not. I have no objection to make when roads in towns and villages will run either north and south or east and west, because for town life this arrangement spells efficiency. In the country, however, the raison d'être of these chess-board roads is somewhat obscure. When combined with old-time roads that originally followed goat-paths or sheep-tracks, its effect is confusing. But when taken to the extreme, and one finds the main highways connecting large cities abound with sharp right-angle turns at every few miles, sometimes going north to make up a little latitude, then continuing west, then returning south to lose the latitude gained, and afterwards continuing west again, the result is ridiculous and sometimes exasperating; very often two, three, four, or more roads run parallel and only a few yards distant, all leading to the same place. Sometimes they lead to different places. Sometimes they lead nowhere at all. Sign-posts are not popular anywhere in the United States. Instead the roads are identified by painting every third or fourth or tenth or nth telegraph pole with different colours. When properly carried out, this principle is a very commendable one, and without it travel would be absolutely impossible. But when followed only imperfectly, or when the colours become faded and obliterated, so that one trail can be easily mistaken for another, the traveller has many troubles and trials ahead.
I had ample moral consolation, therefore, for completely losing my way only ten miles out of Cincinnati, and wasted a full hour in trying to get on the right "pike" without going back.
Incidentally the system of decorating telegraph poles in accordance with the trail they follow has its humorous side. There are, all told, over a hundred different trails or "National Highways" in different parts of the States, and each one is supposed to have its distinctive sign. Thus the "Pike's Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway" is identified by a circle of scarlet above a circle of white, and the "Lincoln Highway" by circles of red, white, and blue. Sometimes, as in the cases of the "Blackhawk Trail" and "Mackinaw Indian Trail," the sign is of a more or less complex nature, including the profile of an Indian's head, for instance. The humour of the situation will be apparent when a single stretch of road coincides with say four or five separate trails. Each telegraph pole is truly a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, with its inscriptions, circles, squares, profiles, bales of cotton, etc., etc., painted on in various colours from top to bottom!
In large towns and cities where several trails meet, it requires the quintessence of alertness and deduction to find one's way by the telegraph poles, which, save for a few exceptions, represent the only means of identification. Strange, in a country using twenty times the number of cars per head found in any other country in the world, that facilities for using them should be so meagre as at times to be almost prehistoric!
It is strange also that some of the roads that were constructed even in modern times were the achievement of personal enterprise and are even now "boosted" and advertised by their "promotors." An outstanding case is that of the "Pike's Peak Highway" just mentioned, which is one of the three trails that cross the Continent from east to west. This road boasts a President, three Vice-Presidents, and a Secretary-Treasurer! Between them these worthy gentlemen are responsible for the proper maintenance of the road (experience compels a sarcastic smile), and for the furnishing of information to travellers thereon, etc. Where the money comes from I wot not, unless it be from the various motoring clubs in the country. In a booklet, published apparently by them, it is described as "The Appian Way of America." Permit me to quote passages from this remarkable publication:—
"Increased attention is this year being focussed on the 'See America' idea, and motorists planning a trans-continental trip will naturally select the route of greatest scenic and historic interest. That is why the discriminating tourist will travel over the Pike's Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, the improved central route from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. From New York it follows the National Old Trails Road to Indianapolis; from that city to Salt Lake City, it has its own Distinctive Organisation; and west of Salt Lake City it follows the line of the Lincoln Highway. History places the stamp of approval on this as the Logical trans-continental Highway. Etc., etc. (pages of it).... The trip has no dreariness and no monotony.... (More pages)."
Never was such a grossly misleading impression of ease, comfort, and luxury perpetrated upon an unsuspecting Englishman! It was well said that the pen is mightier than the sword. If ever again I find myself so utterly demented as to motor-cycle across the United States before proper roads have been constructed, may Heaven preserve me from "The Appian Way of America"!
The reader may think that I am dwelling unduly on the subject of roads, but I do so at this juncture because it was a subject which now became of increasing magnitude. Practically the last sign of paved road of any kind between this point and the Pacific Coast (some 2,500 miles away) would be encountered at Indianapolis, and from there onwards were universally the execrable "dirt" roads that so seriously threaten not only the comfort but the safety of motor-cycling. I was not even disappointed at the outlook, because I came to America without even expecting any form of trail or route across its entirety to be at my disposal. But I feel the natural resentment of the Englishman when I am led to believe that there is a luxurious "highway" ahead, only to find an aggravated series of dust-heaps, mud-pools, and cow-paths!
The road, however, to Indianapolis was not of the "Appian Way" variety. It was comparatively good in places, and ran for many miles along the valley of the Miami River, amidst beautiful scenery of ever-changing variety. After a few miles, the Ohio-Indiana boundary was crossed, and here, as many times afterwards, I was struck by the apparently sudden change of landscape, the same as the home tourist can almost always discern by the "feel" of the country whether he is in England or Wales, no matter if he be without his map for reference. I do not mean that either Ohio or Indiana is particularly mountainous. On the other hand, the latter is on the whole somewhat flat, as if in preparation for the weary stretches of monotonous prairie that are to be encountered the more one travels westward until the Rockies are reached.
I made little headway that afternoon, and at 10.30 in the evening I was still some distance from Indianapolis, the capital of the State. I therefore looked around as best I could in the pitch-darkness, with only my lights as a guide, for a likely spot for my night's abode. Water is a sine qua non for the camping vagrant, and when I came to a large steel bridge I decided that that was the place for me. It evidently spanned a pretty big river, but it was so far below, or seemed so far, I could not see the water. A lengthy reconnoitre from the road led me to the edge of a field of corn whence I could hear the river but could not see it for dense masses of vegetation.