Tread

“ In the double gloom of trees and fog, I could not see my guide; I could only follow his tread. Not the least fear had I: I believe I would have followed that frank tread, through continual night, to the world’s end. ”

“ In man, monkey, bear, and many other mammals, and all living reptiles, the heel is on the ground, the tread is on the whole foot, plantigrade; while in all the more specialized and agile animals, and especially in the swiftest of all, such as the horse, the deer, etc., the heel is high in the air, and the tread is digitigrade. ”

“ In walking, their tread is firm and elastic, the step short and quick; and the toes being turned outward and the knee at each advance inclining in the same direction, give a certain peculiarity to their gait difficult to describe. ”

“ If I would remain with my head above the well-rim—which, I freely admit, I had an unphilosophic desire to do—I must swarm as persistently up the rope. That was an eerie and airy sort of treadmill. To climb, and climb, and always climb, paying out the cord beneath me, that I might remain in one place! ”

“ Lyman reached the shore of the creek and walked slowly among the large, smooth rocks, that looked like the hip bones of the worn and tired old earth, coming through. As he approached the tree and the grassy slope whereon he was wont to lie and muse, he saw the fluttering of something white, and then from behind the tree a woman stepped. His heart beat faster, for he recognized her, and when he came up, with softened tread, to the tree, he was panting as if he had run a race. ”

“ A great rat had run out on the spoke of the wheel and when he reached the broad rim had started a treadmill of his own—which made the ghostly sound as it whirred around. Soon this rat grew so tame that he would come out on the spinning-wheel in the daytime, and several others were seen to run around in the wheel as if it were a pleasant recreation. ”

“ It seems a simple thing to work the treadle, but you will find that without previous practice you will forget to make your foot go in the absorbing interest of getting the flax ready to run on the spindle. ”

“ O'er thundering bridge, through boiling surge, He drove the furious horse.
Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode, Splash! splash! along the sea; The scourge is wight, the spur is bright, The flashing pebbles flee.
Fled past on right and left how fast Each forest, grove, and bower! On right and left fled past how fast Each city, town, and tower!
"Dost fear? dost fear? The moon shines clear, Dost fear to ride with me?— Hurrah! hurrah! the dead can ride!" ”

“ Exquisite motion! more maddening than the smooth floating stride of the race-horse, or the crash of the thorn-hedges before the stalwart hunter, or the swaying of the fir-boughs in the gale, when we used to climb as schoolboys after the lofty hawk’s nest; but not so maddening as the new motion of our age—the rush of the express-train, when the live iron pants and leaps and roars through the long chalk cutting; and white mounds gleam cold a moment against the sky and vanish ”

“ Then we had a gradual ascent of some six miles over a barren stony tract, a nullah on our left hand. The morning, hitherto sparkling and fresh, now became overcast, and a violent storm of sleet assailed us. I know nothing more miserable in travelling, than riding at a foot's pace, your horse stumbling at every other step or so, and a chilling blast cutting you to pieces, with its horrid accompaniment of stinging sleet and hail. ”

“ Through the picket-ropes at night?
When a man or horse is hungry, ain't he bound to try and bolt?
When the trail got light and thin
And the ridges walled us in,
And the flankers had to scramble with their toes and finger-nails,
While the wind across the peaks
Whipped the snow against our cheeks,
Then the horses had to suffer for the badness of the trails. ”

“ To the watch, bending over the yard with nought between them and oblivion but a slender foot rope, this was no easy task even in a moderate wind. In a gale, with wet or frozen sails, the stowing of this huge expanse of thrashing canvas can be better imagined than described. ”

“ How small the little figures looked wandering through the trees! She became acutely conscious of the little limbs, the thin veins, the delicate flesh of men and women, which breaks so easily and lets the life escape compared with these great trees and deep waters. A falling branch, a foot that slips, and the earth has crushed them or the water drowned them. ”

“ The action in single-foot is a slow trot in front, and a fast walk behind. It is exactly the movement of a horse thoroughly tired out by a long journey, which is nevertheless being urged forward by its rider. Such an animal, again rested, will return to his normal walk and trot. ”

“ The rider having to some extent perfected herself in walking straight forward, inclining and turning to the right and to the right about, and in executing the same movements to the left, on all of which I shall have a few words to say later, and when she can halt, rein back, and is generally handy with her horse at the walk, she may attempt a slow Trot, and here her sorrows may be said to begin. ”

“ The walk became a trot—the trot a canter. Then a faint melancholy shout at a distance, answered by a ‘Stole away!’ from the fields; a doleful ‘toot!’ of the horn; the dull thunder of many horsehoofs rolling along the farther woodside. Then red coats, flashing like sparks of fire across the gray gap of mist at the ride’s-mouth, then a whipper-in, bringing up a belated hound, burst into the pathway, smashing and plunging, with shut eyes, through ash-saplings and hassock-grass ”

“ On a very steep track, with a keen evening frost, you may have moments almost 251 too appalling to be called enjoyment; the head goes, the world vanishes; your blind steed bounds below your weight; you reach the foot, with all the breath knocked out of your body, jarred and bewildered as though you had just been subjected to a railway accident. ”

“ In deep ravines under the eastern sides of cliffs, Night forwardly plants her foot even at noonday, and as Day retreats she steps into his trenches, skulking from tree to tree, from fence to fence, until at last she sits in his citadel and draws out her forces into the plain. ”

“ With streaming faces and blowing hair they flew up and down between sky and water, bestriding the ends of yard-arms, crouching on foot-ropes, embracing lifts to have their hands free, or standing up against chain ties. ”

“ In the ordinary trot, or in that in which the animal’s strides are very long, the body between each of the double pressures which we have just been considering is projected forward with such force that it remains for an instant separated from the ground. ”

“ Another horse whinnied, quivering with suppressed rage, and after some convulsive wriggling, rushed headlong at the fence behind which we were standing. The rough-riders ride so splendidly that they seem part of the horse, rising and falling with the movement of the bucking. ”

“ Steed on steed-track, dashing off—thickening, doubling, hoof on hoof, In the pauses of the rain.
And the bridegroom led the flight on his red-roan steed of might,— Toll slowly. And the bride lay on his arm, still, as if she feared no harm, Smiling out into the night.
"Dost thou fear?" he said at last;—"Nay!" she answered him in haste,— Toll slowly. "Not such death as we could find—only life with one behind— Ride on fast as fear—ride fast!" ”

“ The last of her now is a brightening Far fire in the forested hills, The breeze as the night nears is heightening, The cordage draws tighter and thrills, Like a horse that is spurred by the rider The great vessel quivers and quails, And passes the billows beside her, The fair wind is strong in her sails, She is lifted along. ”

“ What can be more violent than the fling of boughs in a gale, the tree yielding itself all up the trunk, to the very tip of the branch, streaming and shuddering the way the wind blows, yet never flying in dishevelment away? ”

“ Shortly to say it, when these horsemen felt this new onset, and looking round saw their men fleeing hither and thither over the green fields of Upmeads, smitten by the Shepherds and leaping into the deep pools of the river, they turned and fled, every man who could keep his saddle, and made for the Bridge, the Dry Tree thundering at their backs. ”

“ In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go swinging away like a belated fragment of a storm! ”

“ Its forward wheel overtopped the edge of the ditch and it took the plunge, careening wildly, rocking, swaying, sliding—until with a terrific crash it encountered a tree. There it seemed to pause for an appreciable instant before it buckled, slid to the right and overturned.... ”

“ To-day the iron horse, with its rattling train, carries such travellers by a different route—the screech of its whistle being just audible to wayfarers on the old road, as in mockery of their crawling pace. ”

“ The branches were so low and the undergrowth so thick that it would seem that no rider could make his way; but we were riding for our lives, and knew that the limbs would hold back our enemies even more than ourselves. For five minutes we tore wildly through the woods, half the time with our faces hidden in our horses’ manes to save our eyes from being plucked out by the branches. ”

“ In the flying trot the horse leaps a considerable distance through the air at each stride—evidently a mode of progression unsuited for ladies, who must attain speed in trotting by quickening the step without undue lengthening of the stride. ”

“ On one occasion I was proceeding on horseback on a narrow path that ran along a very high precipice, when, deeply engrossed as I was in thought about the near future, I found myself all of a sudden thrown down to the ground, before I had had time to free myself from a branch of a tree, which had caught me by the neck and caused the disaster, assisted by the horse's movement onward. ”

“ Every pack-horse of the mountains knows the trick of planting legs like stanchions and blowing his sides out in a balloon when the men are tightening cinches. No matter how tight girths may be, before every climb and at the foot of every slope there must be re-tightening. ”

“ An hour's hard riding brought him into a tremendously rough country, where the trail at times was nothing more than a narrow defile or ledge, and sheer walls of rock rose thousands of feet above, their giant edges cutting the blue sky like the teeth of a mighty saw. ”

“ A trot is odious to them, and they express the utmost astonishment at a person who can like that uneasy gait, as they call it. The favourite gaits which all their horses are taught, are a pace and a wrack. ”

“ Just like tracked beasts they knew every sound which portended danger, and already from afar off, even from the very edge of the wood, more than a kilomètre away, their ears, attuned to every sound, had perceived the measured tramp of horses upon the soft, muddy road. ”

“ Ten men, mounted on the strongest horses, broke the road, each man in succession opening the path, either on foot or on horseback, until he and his horse became exhausted, when he dropped to the rear. ”

“ Who has not seen an untrained animal force his rider to dismount to lift some gate-latch which was really within easy reach, or prancing about in a crowd, to the terror and vexation of his neighbors, or in momentary danger of hooking his legs into the wheels of passing vehicles? ”

“ When it became light enough to see good, we would ride out, rope in hand, to meet them and apt as not one of the old-timers, may be a fifteen or twenty-year old steer, which were continuously on the lookout, would spy us before we got twenty yards from the timber. ”

“ Before long, the horses refused to carry their riders, and all, men as well as animals, advanced on foot, and step by step; by degrees, our faces grew pale, our hearts sick, and our legs incapable of supporting us ”

“ The sleigh was covered, but I could look out in front and see the plucky creatures scrambling up a bank after they had extricated us from the great drift at the bottom of the gully. If there had been a tree to guide us, or had it been daytime, it would not have seemed so hopeless a journey. ”

“ If you leave this trail on the way back you're going to run out of water first thing, and your horse is going to break his leg, if it ain't his neck, the next thing; and then you die because you can't pick up another waterhole. ”

“ My patrol duty led me along the trail of the emigrants proceeding westward; and even in the darkness, I was able to follow it without difficulty, riding most of the way at a trot. When the moon rose, I increased my pace to a gallop, and scarce halted until daybreak, when, perceiving a small stream that ran through the bottom of a narrow valley, I rode toward it. There dismounting, I gave my horse to the grass—which was growing so luxuriantly as to reach up to his knees. ”

“ To try to walk swiftly was to be checked after only two or three steps by sharp collision with some tree-trunk which he could not see before he felt it, or brought to a full stop by clumps of tangled, thorny bushes which enmeshed him, or to be tripped or thrown by some inequality of the ground. ”

“ Until now she had not even known that he had brought a rope; now she wondered just how hazardous was the hidden trail which they were travelling; if it were in truth but the matter of half a dozen feet which she would fall if she slipped? He made the other end of the short tether fast about his own body, said "Ready?" ”

“ And in another minute they were gliding along the road at a pace which the muffled beating of the horses' hoofs on the thin sheet of snow that covered the road showed to have broken out of the conventional trot, and to resemble something more like a gallop. ”

“ On the opposite wing of the flying wedge galloped a dust-colored gray, ragged of mane and tail, and vindictive of eye, like its down-headed rider, who shifted his glance rapidly from side to side and watched the ground closely before his horse as if he were perpetually prepared for danger. ”