Crossroads

“ The roads that she would travel would be like those they knew—roads that climbed rocky, fir-clad hills and at their summits gave one far-reaching stretches of sea with surf-swept islands and towering white lighthouses; lonely by-roads that led to scraggly farms and gray farmhouses, where lived people who fought a losing fight against the barren land; elm-shaded village roads bordered by green-shuttered houses and by white gates like their own. ”

“ If denied the longer outing, I hope that at least it is your custom to go forth upon a holiday to look upon the larger earth. Where the road most winds and dips and the distance is of the finer purple, let that direction be your choice! Seek out the region of the hills! Outposts and valleys here, with smoke of suppers rising. Trains are so small that a child might draw them with a string. Far-off hills are tumbled and in confusion, as if a giant were roused and had flung his rumpled cloak upon the plain.
Or if a road and a stream seem close companions, tag along with them! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hiding in the woods until night again came on, I continued my course eastward, and some time after midnight came upon a wide, well beaten road, one end of which led, at this place, a little to the left of the north-star, which I could plainly see. Here I deliberated a long time, whether to take this road, or continue my course across the country by the stars; but at last resolved to follow the road, more from a desire to get out of the woods, than from a conviction that it would lead me in the right way. ”

“ The new highway appeared to have been thrown open to the world, and the dullest imagination saw the air thronged with colossal chariots, bearing travellers in perfect safety, and with more than the speed of the eagle, from city to city, from country to country, reckless of all the obstacles—the seas, and rivers, and mountains—which Nature might have placed in the path of the wayfarer. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ But we'll still be together, this road and I, Together, wherever the long road goes. The wind chases by us, and over the corn Pale shadows flee from us as if from their foes. Like a snake we thresh on the long, forlorn Land, as onward the long road goes. ”

“ But the country road belongs to another world—a world apart—and is traveled by a different people. It, too, has its aim and destination, but it is deliberate in its course; it neither cuts through the hills nor fills the valleys, but accommodates itself to the windings of streams and to the steepness of slopes. ”

“ If I can not bring to the mind of one living to-day the full picture of those days when this country was not yet all ours, and can not restore to the comprehension of those who never were concerned with that life the picture of that great highway, greatest path of all the world, which led across our unsettled countries, that ancient trail at least may be a memory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That narrow foot-path led to civilisation, and has broadened into the highway because human fellowships and needs have multiplied and directed the countless feet that have beaten it into permanency. Every new highway has been a new bond between Nature and men, a new evidence of that indissoluble fellowship into which they are forever united. ”

“ Just think of the great mountain districts which lie in the very midst of civilisation, pathless, trackless, and unknown, where a benighted traveller may perish within the very sound of succour, if he but knew where to seek it. How cheering to the wayworn traveller as he plods along his weary road, to lift from time to time his eyes to the guide-star in the distance! ”

“ A French road, like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight, straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and seems to tip over the horizon; or if you are in an undulating wooded district, you catch sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge ”

“ Our path lay through a wood, and as twilight deepened we sometimes doubted whether we had not gone astray through the gloom of the thicket. You know that a mile of unknown road, with some suspicion hovering in the mind as to whether you are in the right path, becomes at least three, or rather one feels as if it would never end. ”

“ All the roads from dusk to dawn gay they wind and twist,
The old road to Paradise, easy it is missed!
But out on the wet battlefields few the roadways wind,
One to grief, one to death—no road that's kind—
The old road to Paradise, plain it is to find. ”

“ We mark the frontier line.
'But be it east or west,
One common sign we bear,
The tongue may change, the soil, the sky,
But where your British brothers lie,
The lonely cairn, the nameless grave,
Still fringe the flowing Saxon wave. ”

“ The road—if road it could be called—wound for the first five miles through the heart of an immense forest, and being, in every sense of the word, a by-path, was completely overshadowed by projecting branches of trees, so closely interwoven, as to prevent a single sunbeam from making its way, even at noon, within the arch. ”

“ As he advances, he observes the number of cross routes which branch off from the main road, and which, though of less dimensions, are equally remarkable for their masterly structure and compact condition. ”

“ After crossing the Grand River, the road for many miles has a very delightful aspect. On each side of the road, extensive plains, thinly planted, apparently, by the hand of man, spread further than the eye can reach, and afford a pleasant contrast to the sombre gloom which hangs, like the shadow of darkness, over the greater part of this extensive continent. ”

“ It is so common to see a cross upon the roadsides, in various portions of this country, that I have endeavored to get some intelligible explanation of their design; but no one seems to have any more satisfactory solution than that these people think that they secure some immunity from all harm by the presence of a cross. They are seen very frequently at the forks of roads, at the point where a family path leads into the main road. ”

“ Burdened with all this cargo, and in a rough country where each traveller makes his own road—since no others exist—progress is slow: through jungle, broken ground or wood, the wayfarer steers by compass, landmark, or instinct—sometimes by the lack of the latter, as he finds too late. ”

“ Are there not roads which never paid toll, roads in the waste, roads travelled only in vision, roads once traversed by the feet of myriads, yet now overgrown by the forest, or buried deeply in the marsh? ”

“ Like a traveller who has reached a certain stage of his journey, we look back over the region traversed, losing sight, in such a wide prospect, and in the mists of such a far distance, of many turns in the road, and places by the way, which at one time seemed important, and only noting here and there certain significant landmarks which declare the way by which we have come. ”

“ 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 that leads us onward may perhaps pass unrecognized as such by travellers who are used to the smooth surface over which the motor races in a cloud of dust in Western countries. But let the Author assure them that this broad track, one side supplied with rough stones picturesquely dispersed, the other chiefly consisting of ruts and holes, is indeed a road, and that, too, one whereon we have to travel. Moving along we soon forget its shortcomings in the beauty of the scenery on either hand. ”

“ I can't bear the level highways of Life, cut like a Route Nationale straight from point to point, white, steam-rollered, respectable, horrible. For me the by-ways and the lanes, the hedges smelling of wild roses and woodbine, or a-fire with berry and burning leaf, the cross-cuts leading you know not whither, but delightfully sure to surprise you in the end. ”

“ You are in rabbit-land, traveling its highways—the most complicated and entangling system of thoroughfares that was ever constructed. The individual roads are straight and plain enough, but at a glance one can see that the plan of the system is intended to bewilder and lead astray all who trespass here. ”

“ A hundred deeply-rutted tracks now cross or run parallel with the once sole roadway. Wild oaths in strange tongues awaken the long-silent echoes. All ranks and orders of men are mingled as in the old crusades. ”

“ In fact, so gloomy were their surroundings that after eating Phil Way proposed that they should divide themselves, two in each party, and explore to the north and south of the highway for a mile or so, making a detour into the forest as they went. ”

“ Outside, the dawn was coming up from the east to meet us—as lovely a dawn as ever broke in rose-color and flame. As the daylight grew, we were able to see how complete the arrangements were for the safety of the run. At every crossing, whether of railway, highway, or farm road, a man was posted—1,300 men in all, it is said, along the 510 miles of line. ”

“ I cannot perceive why it should be impossible to journey from one place to another unless we “march up a hill, and then march down again.” It may be the safest road, and there may be a resting place at the top of the hill, affording a commanding view of the surrounding country ”

“ We left these people, while making this digression, on the king's highway severing forever the strong ties that bound them to the land and the people of their birth. As we now resume our journey with them, especially if we have not made the trip before, we are irresistibly attracted by the wild and rugged manifestations of nature along our route. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pass through a fertile tract of country—Discontent of some of the Party—Good humour restored—Conversation with Mokărē relative to a future state of existence—Journey resumed to the Westward—Arrive at a Lake—Barren Land—Proceed to the Southward through a hilly tract—Course altered to the Eastward—Ascend a Mountain, and obtain an extensive view. We now pursued a course directly north, passing through a country keeping the same general character,—good, open, forest land, without much timber. ”

“ Think of the men who carried the railways across Canada and America, fighting for the pathway, step by step! Think of them in the awful climate of West Africa, laughing and playing and singing one evening and dead the next! ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is these portage paths for which we shall look as we proceed westward. As we pass, one by one, these slight roadways across the backbone of the continent, whether they be miles in length or only rods, they must speak to us as almost nothing else can, today, of the thousand dreams of conquest entertained by the first Europeans who traversed them, of the thousand hopes that were rising of a New France richer and more glorious than the old. ”