Chapter XXVII.
Down the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and Home again.
A bicycle excites more attention through Southern Ohio and West
Virginia than in any State or Territory across which I have ridden. On
one occasion, in Ohio, a district school was dismissed, and the
schoolmaster asked me to perform a little for the edification of the
scholars. I was climbing a steep hill at the time, in a broiling hot
sun, and so declined, but was sorry afterwards that I did so. Crossing
the Ohio River at Marietta, and following the north-western pike,
east through West Virginia, over a very fair road, notwithstanding
the hills, the machine was an object of curiosity to every one. In
passing the farm-houses, some one was sure to give the alarm, and in
some mysterious way the whole household was instantly aware that the
opportunity of a lifetime was at hand, and they were bound to improve
it. Out would come "Paw" and "Maw," and four or five children, and
generally three or four guests, for the people are great visitors
in this section. And after I had passed they would all laugh, not
derisively, but because they were pleased. The grown folks really
acted childish about the machine.
One morning a little boy on horseback rode on ahead, and aroused the
neighbors for miles. On another morning I got started early, and was
noiselessly passing the house when the dog, I believe, gave the alarm,
and the whole family, nine of them, broke from the breakfast-table
and rushed out into the road, the farmer holding a Bible in his hand,
with his finger in the place, so that the morning service might be
resumed when I was gone. It was a pleasure to answer the questions of
all these simple people, but when I passed through the larger towns
it was really annoying to be the object of so much interest.
At Grafton, for instance, I stopped on the sidewalk for a minute,
and in less time than it takes to write this I was surrounded. Then
I moved out upon the curbstone, and instantly the crowd surged into
the street and gutter, simply to get in front and look me squarely
in the face. Here a reporter, in the form of an elderly gentleman,
slightly inebriated, interviewed me, and contrary to my usual feeling
when being questioned, I was decidedly pleased this time, and the
crowd enjoyed it fully as much. It was only after asking and hearing
the answers to his questions over and over again that he was able to
put them upon paper, and when I told him the distance I had traveled
on the wheel he made a calculation in regard to the circumference of
the earth that surprised me, but I said nothing. This is the result
of his muddled memory as it appeared in a Grafton paper:
"Mr. Thayer may be regarded as one of the most remarkable men
of the age, who has accomplished the feat of traveling more
than half way around the world on his bicycle. In his modest,
unassuming way he informs us he has traveled 4,100 miles on his
bicycle since leaving home."
But to counterbalance the annoyance there were many things about the
ride through West Virginia that were pleasing and new. A very busy
branch of the Baltimore & "Ohar" railroad runs for miles close to the
pike, and many times while I was climbing the long hill the trains
would take a short cut and go through the hill, making the ground
tremble beneath me as they rushed through the tunnel. The beauty of
the changing foliage was at its prime, the air cool, and the wind blew
the rustling leaves about with a pleasing noise. Sometimes I would
sit down under a shady tree and quench my thirst with two or three
nice apples (they were very plenty everywhere) or crack a few black
walnuts, much to the anxiety of the chirping squirrels in the trees,
or pull up a root of sassafras or a bunch of pennyroyal.
I stopped for a few minutes near a pair of bars. A squirrel came
running along on the stone wall to these bars with something in its
mouth, and, jumping down to the ground, skipped across to the other
side, and went on his way along the wall. Pretty soon he came back,
and in a short time had another chestnut in his mouth to be stored
away with the first. As he jumped down to the ground to cross the space
between the walls for the third time, a good-sized rat sprang out from
under a large stone, and chased the squirrel half way across. Then
the rat went back into his hole and waited. I could just see the
head peeping out. Pretty soon the squirrel came back as big as life,
and had got about half way across when the rat pounced out upon him,
and the squirrel gave one squeak, and was back on the wall again in
an instant. The rat retired to the hole again with a very determined
look. I was getting very much interested. The squirrel, with more
discretion, came slowly down to the ground with compromising chirps
and creeped along, turning first to one side and then the other,
but all the time arguing the question in his squeaking voice. The rat
came out to meet him, a few steps at a time, sullen, but settled in
his purpose to allow no more crossing on his premises under penalty
of his jaw; and the affair to me was getting more than interesting
when a small, shaggy dog came running along, in the road, turned,
and went under the bars, and the rat went one way and the squirrel
the other, without more ceremony.
All this added spice to the trip, especially as I had ridden so many
miles through a section of the country where there were neither hills,
trees, apples, nuts, sassafras, pennyroyal, nor water--to say nothing
about squirrels and rats. Here there was too much water--hundreds
of little brooks crossing the road, making unnumbered dismounts
advisable. This reminds me of the different remedies wheelmen have of
quenching thirst. Some advise taking toothpicks, others pebbles in the
mouth, and so on. But somehow I have become accustomed to using water,
that is, when I could get it. With the perspiration oozing visibly from
every pore in a wheelman's body for hours at a time, it seems only
common sense to think that that waste of moisture must be supplied,
not by extracting the juice from a wooden toothpick or a stone, but
by a liquid in some form or other. When the system is dry it needs
water, just as the stomach does food when it is empty. Toothpicks
and pebbles may excite saliva in the mouth for a short trip, but as
a regular beverage they are of little use.
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."
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.
Leaving the canal at Williamsport, I followed along the road
towards Sharpsburgh, just in the rear of Lee's line of battle at
Antietam. After spending a little time at the National Cemetery, which
is on a hill that commands a fine view of the whole battle-field,
and on which, I was told, a part of Lee's artillery was stationed,
but out of ammunition, I rode around to Burnside Bridge. Not till
I saw that bridge did I fully realize where I was. A picture of it
appeared in Harper's Weekly twenty-four years ago, and all those
war sketches were so familiar to me, having made a strong impression
on my boyish memory, that when I passed a bend in the road, and the
three-arched stone bridge came in sight, I felt as if I was walking on
sacred ground. More lives were laid down in other parts of the field,
I did not know just where, but this spot I recognized instantly,
and remembered reading at the time of how much importance it was,
and I left it with a greater respect than I ever had for the brave
Connecticut men who faced death in that battle.
Getting back upon the tow-path again at one of the fords where Lee's
army slipped away across the Potomac into Virginia, I was soon at
Harper's Ferry. The brick building still remains in which so many men
were imprisoned by John Brown on the night and morning of his raid,
and I was shown the spot where he and his men shot down in a most
cold-blooded and unprovoked manner several defenseless citizens of
the place.
Reaching Baltimore by train I made a stop of a day and a half, but
couldn't resist the temptation, after so long an absence from home,
to step upon another train that brought me home to Hartford without
change.
Perhaps a few dry statistics of the trip may not be uninteresting
to wheelmen. During the trip the points of special interest visited
were the Hudson River and the Highlands, the Catskill Mountains,
Niagara, Pike's Peak, Salt Lake, Tahoe, the Calaveras Big Trees, the
Yosemite Valley, the California Geysers, Monterey, Columbia River,
Shoshone Falls, the Yellowstone Park, the Black Cañon, the Royal
Gorge, and Marshall Pass. The route was through twenty-three States
and Territories, and a stop of from one day to three weeks was made
in the principal cities in those States and Territories. The distance
traveled by wheel, rail, and steamer, was a little over eleven thousand
miles; the time nearly seven months.
Distance traveled on the wheel during the trip, 4,239 miles, making
a total distance traveled on the same machine, 7,900 miles. The only
tire that was ever on the front wheel is still in good condition;
that wheel runs almost as true now as it did when it was new. Only one
spoke has ever got loose or broken in it. The rim of the little wheel,
although repaired once or twice, is still in good shape, the middle
looks well, and the whole machine is in good serviceable condition. In
fact, it carries me nearly every day now, over rough pavements
and sometimes out into the country eight or ten miles over frozen
ground and dangerous ruts. I often got reduced rates on railroads,
being a newspaper correspondent, but this help was counter-balanced
by paying local rates which are always higher than through rates,
but the total cost of the long trip, including repairs, clothes,
and every expense whatsoever, was $284.70.