Archer Butler Hulbert

“ Agriculture and cattle-raising, in their beginning produce careless customs and indolence; the mental faculties remain weak, the ideas limited, and the imagination, without counterpoise, extravagant. Therefore we admire the wisdom and penetration of the North American Indian, his sublime eloquence and heroic spirit in contrast to the Asiatic shepherd, from whom we receive only simple Arabic fables. The man, of whatever color he may be, is always that which the irresistible influence of his surroundings has formed him. ”

“ Nature itself had decreed that the great route of transportation in New York State was to run where the great trail of the Iroquois for centuries had run—through the Mohawk Valley. Along that central trail from Albany, ‘the Eastern Door,’ to Buffalo, ‘the Western door of the Long House,’ the course of empire westward was to take its way. ”

“ It can’t be done.’ The drivers on these roads, who certainly get over the ground in a manner which is quite miraculous, so twist and turn the team about in forcing a passage, corkscrew fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a common circumstance on looking out of the window, to see the coachman with the ends of a pair of reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing, or playing at horses, and the leaders staring at one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as if they had some idea of getting up behind. ”

“ The ‘dividing ridge’ of a district is that which, while it is, as it were, the back-bone of the range of which it forms a part, heads at the same time all the transverse ravines, whether on the right or on the left hand, and thereby spares to the traveller an infinity of toilsome ascent and descent.
“I have sometimes observed that an Indian trail wound through a country in a course perfectly serpentine, and appeared to me to travel three miles when only one was necessary. ”

“ How delighted were the old tavern-keepers in central New York with the opening of the Erie Canal, on whose boats immigrants [Pg 116] ate and slept? About as happy, we may say, as were the canal operators when a railway was built, hurrying travelers on at such a rapid pace that their destinations could be reached, in many cases, between meals!
Yet until the railway came, the fast mail-stages rolled along over the Genesee Road, keeping alive the old traditions and the old breed of horses. Local business was vastly increased by the dawning of the new era ”

“ Some of the most interesting descriptions of pioneer traveling are from the racy pages of Charles Dickens’s American Notes, a volume well known to every reader. No description of early traveling in America would be complete, however, without including a number of these extremely witty, and, in some instances, extremely pathetic descriptions of conditions that obtained in Virginia and Ohio in Dickens’s day. ”

“ Rising out of Onondaga Hollow is a long and very steep hill. The road is constructed on the southern side of a precipice, in such a manner that, as you approach the top of the hill, you have a tremendous gulf on your left hand, at the bottom of which you hear the murmur of a brook fretting among the rocks, as it is passing on toward the Onondaga Creek, which it joins in the Hollow. ”

“ He is a hunter by profession. We had choice venison for breakfast, and there were around the house and near by a great number of deers, bears, panthers, etc. I cannot abstain from believing that the manly effort which must be put forth in the hunt, the boldness which it requires, the keen observation which it encourages, the dexterity and activity which are necessary to its success, act together more forcibly for the development of the physical and mental strength than any other occupation. ”

“ To give the more vivid impression of personal experience a chapter is devoted to a portion of Thomas Bigelow’s Tour to Niagara Falls 1805 over the Genesee Road in its earliest years, when the beautiful cities which now lie like a string of precious gems across this route were just springing into existence. For a chapter on the important “Catskill Turnpike,” which gives much information of road-building in central New York, we are indebted to Francis Whiting Halsey’s The Old New York Frontier. ”

“ There is scarcely any one to help him; there are seldom any loungers standing round; and never any stable-company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, when we have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting again, arising out of the prevalent mode of breaking a young horse; which is to catch him, harness him against his will, and put him in a stage-coach without further notice: but we get on somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a violent struggle ”

“ Washington’s dream of a connected waterway was, of course, hopelessly chimerical, and after him no one pushed the subject of a highway of any kind between the East and the West through Virginia. Washington’s own [Pg 28] plans materialized in the Potomac Navigation Company, and his highway, that should be a strong link in the chain of Federal Union between the improved Potomac and the Ohio, became the Cumberland Road; and it ran just where he did not care to see it—through Maryland and Pennsylvania. ”

“ Here, near this road, a great experiment was made a few years after its building, when a canal was proposed and dug, amid fears and doubts on the part of many, from Albany to Buffalo. One of the first persons to advocate a water highway which would eclipse the land route, sent a number of articles on the subject to a local paper, whose editor was compelled to refuse to print more of them, because of the ridicule to which they exposed the paper! Poor as the old road was in bad weather, people could not conceive of any better substitute. ”

“ In the fight between Virginia officers in Forbes’s army in 1758 over the building of a new road through Pennsylvania to Fort Duquesne, instead of following Braddock’s old road, is an historic example of this intense rivalry. A noted example, more easily explained, was the conflict and perennial quarrel between the Connecticut and Pennsylvania pioneers within the western extremity of the former colony’s technical boundaries. That Washington was a Virginian is made very plain in a thousand instances in his life ”

“ I don’t know what the sensation of being darned may be, or whether a man’s mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the process than anybody else; but if the endurance of this mysterious ceremony by the old lady in question had depended on the accuracy of her son’s vision in respect to the abstract brightness and smartness of the Harrisburg mail, she would certainly have undergone its infliction. ”

“ But while scanning carefully this mountain barrier, which for so long a period held back civilization on the Atlantic seaboard, there is found another route that was historic and deserves mention as influencing the westward movement of America. It was that roadway so well known three-fourths of a century ago as the Old Northwestern Turnpike, leading from Winchester, Virginia, to the Ohio River at Parkersburg, Virginia, now West Virginia, at the mouth of the Little Kanawha. ”

“ We spent the first night at West Port. Up to this point, at the proper seasons, the Potomac is navigable and could be made so quite a distance further. But even in the present state the land journey to the Monongahela, which is navigable and flows into the Ohio, is but a distance of 60 miles....
“The road is not in a bad condition and could be made most excellent. This will, without doubt, be accomplished just as soon as the country is sufficiently inhabited, since there is no nearer way to reach the Western waters. ”

“ The facility of transportation by means of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers on one side, and Wood Creek, Oneida, and Ontario Lakes on the other, together with the extraordinary fertility of the adjacent country, must at no great distance of time make Utica a place of great business and resort, and of course its population must rapidly increase. ”

“ Old Foot is a crabbed.... He has been scolding and swearing at Adam all this morning about something that I cannot understand. It has rained last night, and the roads are again intolerable. Adam says he cannot go again until his father says the word, and that may not be this two or three days. But we cannot go and carry our packs on our backs now, the roads are so bad, and we should gain nothing to walk, but spend our strength to little or no purpose. We must wait for a wagon to go along our way, and join it, or wait for the roads to grow better. ”

“ Parkersburg became one of the important entrepôts in the Ohio Valley; as early as 1796, we shall soon see, a pioneer traversing the country through which the Northwestern Turnpike’s predecessor coursed, speaks of an awakening in the Monongahela Valley that cannot be considered less than marvelous. Taking it through the years, few roads have remained of such constant benefit to the [Pg 40] territory into which they ran, and today you will be told that no railway has benefited that mountainous district so much as this great thoroughfare. ”

“ The road was then in its most prosperous period. It was not uncommon for one of the hotels, which marked every few miles of the route, to entertain thirty or forty guests at a time. The freight wagons were huge in size, drawn by six and eight horses, and had wheels with wide tires. Stages drawn by four and six horses were continually in use. Not infrequently came families bound for Ohio, where they expected to settle—some of these Connecticut people, who helped to plant the Western Reserve settlements. ”

“ If a fire takes place on a prairie where there is already a distinct trail, it is as easy to follow it, if not more so than before; because the short and beaten grass offering no food to the fire, partly escapes its fury, and remains a green line upon a sea of black; [Pg 201] but if the party making the trail pass over a prairie which is already burnt, in the succeeding season when the new grass has grown, it can scarcely be traced by any eye but that of an Indian.... ”

“ I want to shave a beard seven days old, and change a shirt about a fortnight dirty; and my fatigue makes rest absolutely necessary. So take my rest this day, whether he has a mind to go or stay with us. Eat very hearty of hominy or boiled corn with milk for breakfast, and boiled smoked beef and pork for dinner, with turnips. After dinner shaved [Pg 49] and shirted me, which took till near night, it being a dark house, without a bit of window, as indeed there is scarce a house on this road that has any. ”

“ We stayed and got breakfast at McFarren’s, and set out about eight o’clock, and walked about twenty-one miles this day to Thompson’s, about half a mile from Buchanan’s in the Cove Gap in the North Mountain. My feet do not feel quite so bad this day, as they have some days. I expect they are growing stronger and fitter for walking every day, though it has cost me a great deal of pain, throbbing, beating, and aching to bring them to it. ”

“ The vane on the steeple is rather whimsical. It is a flying angel, blowing a trumpet against the wind.... To Hosmer’s in Hartford, to breakfast, twelve and a half miles. Between Bloomfield and this, we passed through Charleston, which has but recently been reclaimed from the wilderness. It is perfectly flat, the soil is pretty good, though better, and more settled at some distance from the road than near it. ”

“ The passengers are getting out of the steamboat, and into the coaches, the luggage is being transferred in noisy wheel-barrows; the horses are frightened, and impatient to start; the black drivers are chattering to them like so many monkeys ”

“ There is a wooden bridge across the lake, leading from Cayuga village towards Geneva, one mile long, wanting three [Pg 132] roods. It suffered so much by shocks of the ice last winter, that in some places it is hardly safe to pass it. This forenoon we had passed the outlet of the Owasco Lake, but did not see the lake itself, which we were told was about a mile south of the road. The country hitherto is somewhat uneven, though by no means so much so as near the Onondaga Hollow. The soil, however, is excellent in many places, and is of a reddish color. ”

“ This is higher than anything it has cost us on the road in proportion, but we cannot help it. It is better than to waste so much time in a tavern. It rains steadily, and the road is all mush and water. Before I get on a hundred rods I am half-leg deep in mire. Set off about eight o’clock, and overtook the wagon about two miles ahead. ”

“ Despite the two wars which had created busy scenes in the Mohawk Valley, no landward route connected it with Niagara River and Lake Erie except the Iroquois Trail. [32] No military road was built through the “Long House of the Iroquois.” To gain the key of the western situation—Niagara—the common route was to Oswego. There were local roads along the lake shore, and these were used [Pg 99] more or less by the troops. In the Revolution no American general could get beyond Fort Stanwix by land. ”

“ With the ushering in of the great railroad era, the Susquehanna Valley saw started as early as 1830 many railroad projects which could save it from threatened danger. Their aim was to connect the upper Susquehanna with the Hudson at Catskill, and the Mohawk at Canajoharie. None ever got beyond the charter stage. ”

“ Dwight again passed over the turnpike on his way to Utica. ‘The road from Catskill to Oxford,’ he said, ‘I find generally bad, as having been long neglected. The first twenty miles were tolerable, the last twenty absolutely intolerable.’ After noting that in Franklin ‘religion had extensively prevailed,’ he wrote:
“‘Unadilla is becoming a very pretty village. It is built on a delightful ground along the Susquehanna and the number of houses, particularly of good ones, has much increased. ”