Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

Up the Catskills and along the Erie Canal.

Now that the trees are bare, the terraced appearance of the Catskills is plainly visible, and in climbing up by the new mountain road to the Hotel Kaaterskill, along the northern slope of the Kaaterskill Clove, one wonders at first why the numerous little houses scattered all along up this Clove are not in danger of the catastrophe that befell the Willey House in Crawford Notch, New Hampshire. The sides of the Clove are as steep as the Notch, although not as high, but the rock formation of the Catskills preserves these little hamlets. A landslide here would have to go down a gigantic pair of stairs, while in the White Mountains it would be like slipping off a gothic roof. Half an hour’s rest was sufficient after the tough climb of four miles up the gentle grade, as they called it, of the new road. It was very steep all the way up, and at places very dangerous, a single wire holding up a row of posts which themselves seemed bent on going over, being the only protection against a fall of fifty feet or more. I reached the falls in the rear of the Laurel House just as the western sun was filling the Clove with rainbows, and after convincing myself with some difficulty that the whole mountain would not tip over if I stepped too heavy, I crawled around the amphitheater, little by little, till the water came down directly between the stairs and myself. The ice all around the pool rose up very much like the crater of a volcano, down into the center of which the water plunged from 150 feet above. While I was creeping along backside of this ice crater there was a loud crack, loud enough to be heard above all the other noises, and my feet went down about three inches. A thin shale of ice under my feet had broken, that was all, but my heart came up as my feet went down, and it remained about six inches above its ordinary level for some time.

That night the lively conversation, accompanied by sly winks, and short little words of the gouty but genial proprietor, J. L. Schult, helped to make the evening pass pleasantly, especially when Mr. Schult, of Dutch descent himself, would slyly refer to the Yankee origin of his wife, a quiet, kind lady of Connecticut parents.

Sunday morning came off delightfully clear and cool, and after a ride of a couple of miles by the railroad station and the lake, on one side of which the ice still covered the surface while on the other side buds on the trees were bursting, I reached the Mountain House and sat down for a few minutes, but wishing to be alone crossed over to the Pine Orchard Hotel. A few steps farther brought me to the Beach House where, avoiding contact with people when Nature had so much to say to me, I sat down under the shade of the Catskill Mountain House, and for four hours was undisturbed as I lay there taking in the fine view of the Hudson, the finest, I think, to be had from any of the mountain hotels. If any one is puzzled to account for so many hotels in this section of the mountains, he is no more confused than I was when I had the same building pointed out to me at different times as the Mountain House, the Pine Orchard Hotel, the Beach House, and the Catskill Mountain House, but like the various officers which centered in Pooh-Bah they are all one.

Celebrated as the Catskills are, Connecticut can boast of some hills that out-rank them in one respect, and that is age. The Litchfield Hills in plain sight across the river are not only the tallest in the State but they claim to be about as old as the Adirondacks. The river Saguenay has worn a wrinkle 1,500 feet deep down the face of some rocks of the same age. But the Connecticut hills don’t show their age like that, old as they are. They were well along in their youth when the rocks were born over which flow the waters of Niagara, and the White Mountains, now both bald and grey, had then not even been thought of. They were in the meridian of life when the Rockies came upon the stage, and had passed that point long before the Alps, Pyrennes, Himalayas, and the rocks of which the pyramids are built, had risen above the surface of the ocean. So their real grandeur consists, certainly not in their size, but in the fact that the group of mountains to which they belong, the Laurentian range, as well as the Adirondacks, has remained above the sea level longer than any other land upon the face of the globe. Not once during this time have they ever bowed to the god of the sea. They are not so pretentious as some of their richer and more lofty followers, but in their ripe old age the Litchfield Hills have acquired a weather-beaten and a most enviable title to the first families of creation.

I understood from a wheelman that the coasting down the other side of the mountains toward Catskill was fine, and to enjoy that was my idea in working so hard to get the machine up, but the road was too steep and rough and so all the labor was lost. Crossing the river again at Catskill I rode on to Hudson by moonlight, and the next day kept on, over mostly fine roads, through Kinderhook, where some writers claim the identical “Sleepy Hollow” of Washington Irving is located, to Albany. Washing off some of the dust and dirt I put on a coat and went up to the capitol. Finding I was a stranger those in charge furnished a guide, who took me all over the magnificent structure. To give an idea of the cost of the interior decorations, it will be enough to state that one side of the senate chamber is covered with slabs of Mexican onyx, the cost of this room alone amounting to over one million dollars. On the way out of the city I stopped at the Albany Bicycle Club House, a large two story building, situated on a prominent corner, with a fine lawn in front. The house is nicely furnished, with all conveniences, but the club has of late become more of a social than an athletic club. At Schenectady the only glimpse I had of Jacob W. Clute, the active wheelman of this thriving city, was through the cracks of the court-room door as he was cross-examining a witness, but S. R. James, who has a large crockery establishment here, mounted his tricycle and piloted me along the sidewalks to the tow path. Mr. James has been at different times president and captain of their club, and is a good-sized man of sixty, with side whiskers and moustache.

On the tow-path, at last. A path nearly 300 miles long and perfectly level for forty, fifty, and sixty miles on a stretch. How I looked forward to it. How I longed to get to it. How I thought the hard work was over when I reached it. What fun it would be to ride for hours without a dismount; what time I could make. This and a great deal more I had thought about, read of, and talked over. The great tow-path, the bicyclers’ paradise! Now I was there. Well, to state facts, it is no path at all, it is a common highway, and a very common one too, for everybody uses it. The soil is a mixture of clay and coarse, very coarse, gravel. Round, loose stones filled the ruts and every part of the road. The inside edge of the bank is cobbled and the outside edge full of little cross ditches. Now, where was a wheel to go? Go in the middle and the wheel would take a serpentine course; try to follow a rut and the loose stones would throw the wheel in and out. The outside edge was terribly jolting, the inside edge dangerous, for a variation of an inch or two and the course of the wheel would throw a rider into the mud and water ten feet below in the empty canal. But for all that I tried the celebrated tow-path for ten, twenty, thirty miles, and long miles, too. After bumping along for a mile or two I would get off and walk. Then pound along for two or three miles farther and dismount again, more to prevent the saddle from becoming ruined than anything else, for even a Kirkpatrick’s saddle couldn’t stand everything. Water is as necessary to a wheelman as to a locomotive, and yet there was none to be had excepting at the lock-houses several miles apart and then only in a well, down in some warm swamp; no gushing little streams of sparkling, cool water, such as spring out of the rocks and hills all along the regular highways. The only shade was under the bridges that cross the canal at frequent intervals, where a rider can sit down in the dirt and think how nice it might be on the grass beneath the shade of a pine tree. No matter what part of the road you took it required the strictest attention to business, and after following a rut with every muscle hard and every nerve taut for an hour or two, it became monotonous, to say the least.

The canal follows the south side of the Mohawk River and passes through very few villages, while on the other side of the river are many places, through each of which there must be a mile or two of nice riding, yet I stuck to the canal on principle for six long hours, and left it at Fonda for good. It may be, when the boats are running, that the mules’ kicking abilities are employed, when they slack rope, in firing the million of round stones out of the road, and in that way make the tow-path rideable, but if every mule on the line of the canal had kicked me, personally and individually, with all four feet and all on the same spot, I should not have been any sorer than I was that night. The next day fifty-six miles were made with less labor and decidedly more pleasure over the common roads than was the forty-five miles the day before, and if the tow path was the only way to Buffalo, the next train home would have had me for a passenger. All the way to Syracuse the tow-path, from what I could see in crossing it, is very much the same rough riding, and whenever anyone advised me to take it to a certain place I writhed with pain at the very idea.

At Little Falls the West Shore double tracks, the canal, the river, the four tracks of the New York Central, and the highway are all brought into close proximity by the perpendicular ledges of rocks on both sides of the valley, and the rocks along the highway and in the river are worn and scooped out by action of the elements, very much as they are at Diana’s Baths, near North Conway. It is no uncommon occurrence on the Central road to see a passenger train chasing and overtaking a freight train, while a third train will scoot in between the two, with a fourth train close on to them. There is nothing dull about a trip up the Mohawk valley, even alone on a bicycle.

It is the general opinion that the mud this spring has been the deepest of any for many years, some say twenty-five years; and often I ride over places, now dry and dusty on the surface, that bend and crack like thin ice. A wagon laid up beside the road, with a wheel wrenched off by the deep hard ruts, or a place where rails and boards have been used to extricate a mired horse, are sights of almost daily occurrence. Once I passed a hole in the road where a fine pair of draft horses were ruined. A week sooner and the roads would have been impassable for a bicycle. Even now the ruts prevent any very fast riding. The road scraper has only been used in a very few places, and as the roads have become more dry and dusty the small wheel has become more independent, going off to one side on little excursions of its own, to the natural disconcertment of its rider. After traveling over 400 miles I have had no tumbles, but as I was following a narrow ridge between two ruts, a fly, about as large as the head of a pin, flew into my eye, immediately enlarged itself to the size of a barn, and the next instant I was in the dust. It takes the weak things of this world to confound the bicyclist. The religious crank who has painted the stones and rocks of Connecticut with warnings in regard to the future life has been using the same means of conversion all over York State, and in many places he has taken advantage of alarming situations to enforce his arguments. For instance, in the Highlands below West Point is a deep ravine, down the sides of which the road winds and crosses a bridge nearly 100 feet above the river, on which is posted a sign “dangerous.” The bridge totters under my feet, and right here, painted in staring blue letters are these words: “Prepare to meet thy God,” and “Repent now or you will go to hell.”