bridle road passed along declivities or over hills, the path was in some places washed out so deep that the packs or burdens came in contact with the ground or other impending obstacles, and were frequently displaced."
Though we have been specifically noticing the Alleghenies we have at the same time described typical conditions that apply everywhere. The widened trail was the same in New England as in Kentucky or Pennsylvania—in fact the same, at one time, in old England as in New England. Travelers between Glasgow and London as late as 1739 found no turnpike till within a hundred miles of the metropolis. Elsewhere they traversed narrow causeways with an unmade, soft road on each side. Strings of pack-horses were occasionally passed, thirty or forty in a train. The foremost horse carried a bell so that travelers in advance would be warned to step aside and make room. The widened pack-horse routes were the main traveled ways of Scotland until a comparatively recent period. "When Lord Herward was sent, in 1760, from Ayrshire to the college at
