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avoid the high ground was inevitably to run into bogs and swamps which were even worse than the hills. We do not have roads a mile wide nowadays, but this was not an unheard-of thing in the days of the pioneer roads. It was preferable to have them a mile wide rather than a mile deep, which would certainly have been the case in some places if one track had been used alone. And even with numberless side tracks, skirting in every direction around the more dangerous localities, horses were not infrequently drowned, and great wagons heavy with freight sometimes sank completely out of sight. The Black Swamp Road through Ohio south of Lake Erie was one of the most important in the West. It is recorded that on one occasion six horses were able to draw a two-wheeled vehicle but fifteen miles in three days. A newspaper of August 31, 1837, affirms that "the road through the Black Swamp has been much of the season impassable. A couple of horses were lost in a mud hole last week. The bottom had fallen out. The driver was unaware of the fact. His horses plunged in and ere they could be extricated were drowned." It is