Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 11).djvu/81

 feed troughs suspended at the rear and the tar can swinging underneath, toiling up the long hills (for you will observe there was very little grading done when that roadway was constructed), and you wonder how it was possible to accommodate so much traffic as there was, in addition to stagecoaches and private conveyances, winding in and out among these long lines of wagons. But you must bear in mind that the roadway was very different then from what it is at the present time.

"The narrow, macadamized surface, with its long grassy slope (the delight of the tramp and itinerant merchant, especially when a neighboring tree casts a cooling shadow over its surface), which same slope becomes a menace to belated and unfamiliar travelers on a dark night, threatening them with an overturn into what of more recent times is known as the Summer road, did not exist at that time, but the road had a regular slope from side ditch to center, as all good roads should have, and conveyances could pass anywhere from side to side. The macadam was carefully broken and no stone was allowed to be placed on