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FROM TRAIL TO TURNPIKE
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pushes on; if not, he finds a way about; if this is not possible he throws logs into the hole and makes an artificial bottom over which he proceeds.

We can hardly imagine what it meant to get stalled on one of the old "hog wallow" roads on the frontier. True, many of our country roads today offer bogs quite as wide and deep as any ever known in western Virginia or Pennsylvania; and it is equally true that roads were but little better in the pioneer era on the outskirts of Philadelphia and Baltimore than far away in the mountains. It remains yet for the present writer to find a sufficiently barbarous incident to parallel one which occurred on the Old York (New York) Road just out of Philadelphia, in which half a horse's head was pulled off in attempting to haul a wagon from a hole in the road. "Jonathan Tyson, a farmer of 68 years of age [in 1844], of Abington, saw, at 16 years of age, much difficulty in going to the city [Philadelphia on York Road]: a dreadful mire of blackish mud rested near the present Rising Sun village. . . He saw there the team of Mr. Nickum, of