Country road

“ We may go far up within the country now by the most retired and level road, never climbing a hill, but by broad levels ascending to the upland meadows. It is a beautiful illustration of the law of obedience, the flow of a river; the path for a sick man, a highway down which an acorn cup may float secure with its freight. Its slight occasional falls, whose precipices would not diversify the landscape, are celebrated by mist and spray, and attract the traveller from far and near. ”

“ The splendid view to be obtained from such a promenade in a dust-free and smoke-free country can hardly be pictured to a city bred man or a countryman jogging along the hedge and weed throttled country road. ”

“ Take your eyes off the road and you seem to be in the great forests of a new country. Look back on the road and turn sharply to avoid the first of a convoy of brand-new American tractors, or a maze of telephone wires with their red-and-white labels which have been pulled from their supports by the snow. The great rocks and banks resplendent with their coating of ice, the trees, the snow, the occasional deer, fox, or rabbit contrast strangely with the road—the narrow, winding, mountain road serving for almost all forms of traffic, save the railroad, known to man. ”

“ Roads so straight that they might have been cut with a knife, breaking away at the villages round which they make rectilinear patterns, like the petals of meagre flowers. The English country road is less rational and less sensible, but much more shady and companionable. ”

“ I pulled up at one quiet spot under the shelter of some overhanging trees for refreshment and for a rest, and there I stopped for an hour or more, and not a soul either driving, riding, cycling, or afoot went by. It was a cross-country road, apparently little used, and one to be enjoyed for its quietude and rural pleasantness. It surprised me how often I came upon such long stretches of almost deserted roads; we travelled far on that stage before we met a human being. ”

“ In midst of this level tract of country, where villages, and houses even, are few and far between, the wayfarer’s eye lights upon a stone pillar on the grassy selvedge of the road, a dilapidated object that looks like a milestone. ”

“ Of course an old foot-path in this country always serves to mark the line of a new road when the people who had worn it take to keeping horses. But there are thousands of miles of paths criss-crossing the countryside in all of our older States that will never see the dirt-cart or the stone-crusher in the lifetime of any man alive to-day. ”

“ A road constructed for the convenience of some primitive community or to gratify the caprice of some rich man or lordly ruler becomes often in after years an Appian Way for public travel and commercial intercourse.
A road may be located in one of three ways. It may be laid out in a straight line by crossing lowlands in the mud and going over hills at steep grades. The ancient Britons, like the early settlers in this country, established their homesteads and villages on commanding situations, and ran their roads and bridle-paths in direct courses by their habitations. ”

“ One may drive for a hundred miles north and south over the splendid macadam turnpikes, behind blooded roadsters, at an easy ten-mile gait, and see always the same sight—a smiling agricultural paradise, with scarcely a foot, in fence corners, by the road-side, or in low grounds, of uncultivated, uncared-for land. The open country is more pleasing than the small villages, which have not the tidiness of the New England small villages ”

“ One of the charms of old England is to be found in her numerous foot-paths and green lanes, which are recognized by law, for many of them are older than the highways. When a walker tires of the public road or is in a hurry, if he knows the country, he can turn into some foot-path and reach the place of his destination by short cuts through green lanes, across pleasant meadows, and along shady hedgerows. ”

“ Water is now so abundantly provided that this park is kept green in the driest season. From anywhere in the south side one may mount his horse or enter his carriage for a turn of fifteen or twenty miles on what is equivalent to a country road—that is to say, an English country road. ”

“ When a new road is laid out it is important that it should be located in the best attainable place, considering the natural formation of the surrounding country; for when a highway is once established it is impossible to say how long the tide of humanity and commercial traffic will seek passage over it. While the ordinary processes of Nature—rain, thaw, and frost—are ever at work lowering the hills and mountains and filling up the valleys and lowlands, the public highways of a country remain in the same relative positions from age to age. ”

“ The road was smooth and well paved, now, and the country about was beautiful, so that the travelers rejoiced in leaving the forest far behind, and with it the many dangers they had met in its gloomy shades. ”

“ With the settling of the country and a new century came a new age of road-building. Travel until now had been on north and south routes—on portage paths, which usually ran north and south between the heads of rivers which flowed north or south, on routes of the buffalo, which the herds had laid on north and south lines during their annual migrations, and on Indian trails which had been worn deep by the nations of the north and those of the south during their immemorial conflicts. ”

“ Our road system is being rapidly improved.... Many of our historic and scenic spots and recreational areas, hitherto locked in the uplands, are easily reached as more and more tourists travel pioneer trails on modern highways. ”

“ The place is like hundreds of others that you may see scattered up and down this countryside—two straight, flat, metalled country roads, running north and south and east and west, crossing one another at a faultless right angle. ”

“ Our road lay through a narrow valley, with high hills on either side, and very stony rough going it was, as, in accordance with the customs of this country, there was nothing that one could call a road or even a pathway, and consequently we had to go slowly except when now and then we got out on a bit of grassy ground where we could have a canter. ”

“ I must here observe that no DISTINCT road is ever cut out, but the whole country is cut up into innumerable tracks by the carts and drays, and which are awfully bewildering to the new-comer as they run here and there, now crossing a swamp, now a rocky place, here a creek, there a hillock, and yet, in many cases, all leading BONA FIDE to the same place. ”

“ Hence it is apparent that the ordinary road in a hilly and uneven country should follow the streams as far as possible, as Nature has located them in the places best adapted for highways; and when hills are found on the line of a road they should be surmounted by passing around and across them at the easiest grades possible rather than over them at steep grades. ”

“ The roads being very dusty, traveling by stage at present is rather disagreeable. We passed through a fertile and well-timbered country, with neat cottages and beautiful farms scattered on both sides of the road. ”

“ The road was far too precipitous for the carriage to descend, so we walked down. The country has a singular aspect. In other mountainous lands, we live in the valleys, and look up to the hills as they lift themselves towards the sky. Here, however, we descend from the plain into the ravine. ”

“ I wish to see a large level road over that country, connecting our villages together, near which no one can conceal himself in order to kill passengers, and that our squaws may be enabled to visit from village to village in safety, and not be urged by fear, to cast off their packs, and betake themselves to the thickets, when they see any person on the route. ”

“ In a country that has been lumbered over old trails and woods roads should be followed down hill as the lowlands and water courses are the invariable destination of logs and these old trails and tote roads usually guide the traveler to some lumber camp or clearing from which a well defined road is apt to lead. ”

“ Corduroying the swamps formed the principal part of road-making among the early settlers for many a day. At these annual road-making gatherings opportunity was offered for discussion of the news, politics, religion, war, the state of the crops, comparative advantages of the new country over the old, and so forth, but the principal opportunities, recurring every [210] week, were the hours after Sunday church services. I remember hearing long talks on the wonderful beauty of the Indian corn; the wonderful melons, so wondrous fine for “sloken a body on hot days” ”

“ You can walk out in any direction by the country roads, and round back home; and when you get tired of walking by the narrow roads worn deep between the hedges, and seeing nothing, you can climb out and follow the field-paths. The field-roads are very narrow, barely wide enough for one vehicle ”

“ The terminus of the road is a beautiful and spacious iron building, situated in the middle of a great square; and the road itself is a very substantial job. We rode out twenty-four miles through a picturesque country, the road bordered for most of the way by the bay and lagoons, with beautiful little valleys occasionally opening on either hand, with their patches of sugar-cane and cotton. ”

“ A ROAD AND SOME MOODS I HAVE been living lately near a fine highway, which cuts across the blurred edge of a town and makes straight for the open country. By this road a man may quickly escape from the town and start upon almost any journey. ”

“ Fine but narrow roads wound along among the hills, free almost entirely of stone, and so smooth as to be safe for the most rapid driving, made of their rich, dark, powder-looking soil. Beautiful villages or scattered settlements breaking upon the delighted view, on the meandering way, making the ride a continued scene of excitement and admiration. The air fresh, free, and wholesome; the road almost dead level for miles and miles, among mountains that lay over the land like the great swells of the sea, and looking in the prospect as though there could be no passage. ”

“ There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. ”

“ After passing the ridge of little hills, through banks clothed with hanging woods, the road descends into a little circular valley, surrounded on all sides by rising grounds, which presented a scene of the most perfect rural beauty. ”

“ A road of many moods: a gentle road; a brave, true road; a morning road; a smiling, sunset road; a devil-may-care, starlit road; a lover's moon-whitened road; a road that goes and goes, never returns, yet always is homeward bound. Home to the dingle, the glen, the sheltering greenwood, the chattering little river; the camp of the gipsy. A road bordered by flower-faced fields with drowsing villages, now and then, like ancient inns with bread and cheese and milk.
Such is Jean François' great highway. ”

“ Driving through the long woodland way, shaded and chilly when you are out of the sun; across the Great Works River and its pretty elm-grown intervale; across the short bridges of brown brooks; delayed now and then by the sight of ripe strawberries in sunny spots by the roadside, one comes to a higher open country, where farm joins farm, and the cleared fields lie all along the highway, while the woods are pushed back a good distance on either hand. The wooded hills, bleak here and there with granite ledges, rise beyond. ”

“ I have ridden hundreds of miles on these various Indian paths, and I ever love to trace the roadway where it is now the broad, travelled road, and where it turns aside in an overgrown and narrow lane which is to-day almost as neglected and wild as the old path. ”

“ How different from an English road, which winds around the hills in soft and graceful sweeps, avoiding deep valleys or reverend trees, instead of following the one inveterate idea of a straight line, at a sixfold cost, through thick and thin, over hill and valley. ”

“ The road, for the entire distance, is one uninterrupted ascent toward the summit of one of the lesser hills on which the village stands, affording from every point—unless when now and then a jutting mountain crag overhangs the path, and for a moment, intercepts the vision—a view of the broad expanse of sea, the valley widening as you rise—each footstep of the ascent adding some new beauty of form and color, light and shadow to the scene. ”

“ It lay out of the beaten track, and any one wanting to visit it must needs climb the long winding road that led from the plain beneath, through olive groves and sheepfields, up to the city gate—a steep, difficult road, leading nowhere but to the little town itself. ”

“ This, as the white settler drifted in, became the winter-road; then, as civilization stifled the call of the wild, there uprose from swamp and muskeg the crude corduroy, expanding by degrees into the half-graded highway, until the turnpike and toll-bar, with its despotic keeper, exacted its tribute from progress. ”

“ The study of any highway for itself alone might prove of indifferent value, even though it were an Appian Way; but the story of a road, which shows clearly the rise, nature, and passing of a nation's need for it, is of importance. ”

“ The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back. ”

“ It is an old and trite saying, that roads and highways are an indication of civilization; and the better the road or highway, the more of civilization. But what shall be said of a great movement of educated and intelligent people, without forecasting preparations, without preliminary investigations, and without maps or guides, which moves out into apparently boundless desert-like plains, to cross snow clad mountains, unbridged rivers, through two thousand miles of wilderness inhabited only by wild beasts and wilder men? ”