Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

It is quite common to see three or four kinds of sauce on the table, such as apple, grape, and peach sauce, but it is spoken of as “apple butter,” and “grape butter.” At one house where I was taking a meal, some one said, “Pass the butter,” but that not being quite plain enough, he said, “Pass the cow butter.”

The rain drove me into a house one afternoon, and while waiting there, the brother of the lady of the house came in. She was a woman of more than ordinary intelligence for this section, and fairly good looking, and as she sat by the stove, nursing her baby to sleep, I noticed she spit upon the floor behind the stove. Humming some tune as she rocked back and forth, her voice was frequently interrupted as she expectorated, and for rapidity of fire and accuracy of aim, she greatly excelled her brother who sat near her. Her lips were stained and her teeth discolored. Pretty soon her brother said, “Got any terbacker,” and she, without the slightest concern, pulled out a plug from her pocket and gave it to him. At two other farm-houses where I stopped the women chewed, and upon inquiry I find it is a very common habit with the women in this section, as a little boy said to me, “Yes, some of ’em chew a nickel’s worth a day.”

WORK ON “THE LOG.”

One noon I was seated by a table in an old-fashioned kitchen eating some hot short-cake, that had just been taken from the open fire-place, when a tall, gray-haired, grizzly-bearded farmer came in, and yanking a chair away from near where I sat, he said to his wife, as he sat down, “Where did the damn Dutchman come from?” Smiling, I answered, I was a Yankee. “Then you are worse still,” said he, and he muttered something else I could not hear. But after finding out I had passed through in Illinois the same town in which their son lived the man became mollified, and after showing them how the bicycle worked I thought they seemed more lenient to Yankees than at first.

Hotel-keepers along here show more care for their guests, in some particulars, than anywhere I have been. One asked, as he showed me into my room, if I knew how to put the gas out. This inquiry, although made with the best intentions, no doubt, rather hurt my vanity, for by this time I thought I had traveled enough not to look fresh, at least. Another one took me out of my room in the dark to show where the door was that would lead to the fire-escape, which thoughtfulness I certainly appreciated.

Once, at Cumberland, Md., and on the banks of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, and the hills, the only impediment to a perfect bicycling trip was gone, and all else remained—the fine mountain scenery, the beautiful foliage, the cool, bracing air, a broad river, a winding canal, and an almost perfect bicycle path for nearly two hundred miles. This charming prospect is in wait for any wheelman who has the good fortune to be at Cumberland in October. I glided along for hours and hours, until I was tired of riding, and yet there was no monotony. The scenes were always shifting.

The Potomac River is very crooked, and the canal follows it closely on the north side most of the way. It is not the tow-path, the path where the mules walk; that is nice riding; that is very poor indeed, but it is the smooth, hard wagon road on the bank of the canal that makes the fine wheeling. Where the wagon road is missing, and this is only for a short distance, there is a smooth foot-path made so by the mule-drivers, and this answers all purposes. Wherever the river does not, the canal hugs close to the sides of the mountain, and so for hours and even days I rode along. On the left the mountains, covered with the various colored leaves, then the canal with the numerous boats moving slowly and silently along, in front a broad, smooth, winding path, on the bank of the canal large shady trees; then the wide, smooth river, on the opposite side the numerous trains of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and then the mountains again. Occasionally the canal would widen into a lake half a mile wide, at other times a perpendicular ledge of rocks on one side and the river on the other would force it into a narrow limit. The ride was most enjoyable, gliding along in the shade and without fatigue for hours.

Occasionally at the locks there was just a little fine coasting, but only a little. The mules on the tow-path made no trouble to speak of, and those in the bows of the boats, with their mouths full of hay, would look out of their little windows and prick up their big ears as they rode by as if they were perfectly contented with their lot; but, when they were taken out to drag the boat and the tired mules along, in their turn, they apparently changed their minds.

At one place I came to a tunnel about half a mile long and started to ride through it, but it soon grew so dark riding was unsafe, so I walked, but before I got through even walking was not very pleasant. I could not even see my hand before me and the nickel on the machine was only faintly visible. The railing that prevented me from walking off into the canal I could only feel, not see, and, altogether, it was the darkest tunnel I was ever in. Had a boat entered the other end of the tunnel before I got there, I should have had to go out the way I went in, but I was soon gliding on as usual.