at hand—indeed the settlements were many miles apart in the early days. Many a driver, however, has been compelled to wade in, unhitch his horses, and spend the night by the bog into which his freight was settling lower and lower each hour. Fortunate he was if early day brought assistance. Sometimes it was necessary to unload wholly or in part, before a heavy wagon, once fairly "set," could be hauled out. Around such treacherous places ran a vast number of routes some of which were as dangerous—because used once too often—as the central track. In some places detours of miles in length could be made. A pilot was needed by every inexperienced person, and many blundering wiseacres lost their entire stock of worldly possessions in the old bogs and "sloos" and swamps of the "West."
A town in Indiana was "very appropriately" named Mudholes, a name that would have been the most common in the country a century ago if only descriptive names had been allowed.[1] The condition
- ↑ See "Hulme's Journal" in W. Cobbett's A Year's Residence in the United States (1819), p. 490.
