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 the absence of snow in central New York in the winter of 1818–19 prevented the handling of heavy freight on solid roads; "no hard snow path could be found." The soft roads of the summer time were useless so far as heavy loads of lumber, stone, lime, and tools were concerned. No winter picture of early America is so vivid as that presented by the eccentric Evans of New Hampshire, who, dressed in his Esquimau suit, made a midwinter pilgrimage throughout the country lying south of the Great Lakes from Albany to Detroit in 1818. His experiences in moving across the Middle West with the blinding storms, the mountainous drifts of snow, the great icy cascades, the hurrying rivers, buried out of sight in their banks of ice and snow, and the far scattered little settlements lost to the world, helps one realize what traveling in winter meant in the days of the pioneer.

The real work of opening roads in America began, of course, on the bridle-paths in the Atlantic slope. In 1639 a measure was passed in the Massachusetts