Across America by Motor-cycle

by C. K. Shepherd

I came to a long wooden bridge arrangement, but could find no river. After going two or three miles and finding no Arkansas, I returned to Great Bend to try another road. This time I inquired at the café.

"Straight ahead, you can't miss the bridge."

"Oh, is there a river there? I didn't see one."

Back again to the bridge, but no signs of a river. Instead there was a great stretch of white sand like a sea-beach, but with little trees and shrubs and tufts of grass dotted here and there.

"Well, this is no Arkansas River," said I to myself, "but I'm through. This sand looks pretty comfortable, so here goes."

In amongst the sand dunes I made my bed and never did traveller camp in more delightful surroundings or rest in more peaceful conditions. The stars shone out with unusual brilliancy in the heavens, and the moon rose at the setting of the sun, enveloping all in a magic sheen of silver. A soft cool breeze played gently over the plain and little birds of unknown song and uncounted variety slowly sang themselves to rest. This indeed was no night for sleep; more was it a time for quiet contemplation of all the things that make life good and noble and worthy of the living. How terrible, how awful it would be when I should in the end return to the narrow beaten track of city life, and once again be fettered to "the trivial round, the common task" that knows no magic spell and thrills with no mystic breath. Could it ever be that the duties that bind and numb, the needs that hamper and clog, the tasks that chill and estrange, should once again enshroud me in their toils? Such I suppose are the meditations of everyone who breaks away from home to enjoy for a spell the bounties of nature and whose canopy is the sky.

In the morning I awoke as fresh as the merry sandpipers and waterwagtails that ran and hopped about in dozens. There was no trace of fatigue, no thought but of the glorious day that was opening, no regret but that every day had not brought and would not bring this rapturous dawn.

I learned in the village that I had indeed slept in the middle of the Arkansas River! The summer had been excessively dry and that part of the river which, several hundred miles away, had risen boisterously in the heart of the Rockies and had not been dried up with the heat, had drained through the sandy bed, never to emerge again. This though was one of many rivers that I was to meet with no water in them. Sometimes even, I was to see fences and railways erected across would-be rivers to prevent the cattle straying!

The farther westward I travelled the fewer became the towns. Nevertheless, albeit they were sometimes thirty and forty miles apart, they were all prosperous, new and inviting. Of gasoline there was always an abundant supply at 22 cents (11d.) per gallon. Of garages there were enough and to spare. Indeed, it was surprising what palatial garages were to be found everywhere. Outside each was the familiar "Bowser" pump communicating with a 1,000-gallon tank below the pavement from which anything from half a gallon to six gallons at a time could be pumped up by the garage hand at one turn of the handle. A flexible pipe with a cock at the end leads from the pump, and one's tank can be filled in a few seconds without a drop being spilt. Not once in all my travel through the States have I seen a petrol tin. I do not believe they are used at all because nowhere in the States is it necessary to travel by road with spare petrol on board, provided, of course, that one is careful to fill up regularly at the different towns or stations on the way. Even in the heart of New Mexico and Arizona, even in the terrible "Death Valley" and Mohave Desert of California, stations are found where "gas" and oil can be bought in plenty to carry one well beyond the next to be reached.

At Larned I made a hearty breakfast from canteloupe, coffee and "pie." Now "pie" is one hundred per cent. symbolical of America. In the States they have attained the absolute limit of perfection in the manufacture of pies; indeed I think it must be a "key" industry. Not only can pies of every conceivable kind of fruit (and many inconceivable ones) be obtained, but the cooking thereof is perfection itself.