I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way of
getting along. The road often lay through forests and clearings, in
mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with which my poor beast was
constantly struggling. I would sometimes emerge from a dark wood, five
miles through, perhaps, and find myself near a clearing where the
farmer's house I was seeking lay, half a mile off the road. Picking up
a stout club to defend myself against the inevitable dog, which, in the
absence of men-folks, guarded every log-house, I plodded across the
plowed field, soon to be met by the ferocious beast, who, not seeing a
stranger more than once a month, was always furious and dangerous. Out
would come, at length, the poor woman, too curious to see who it was
that broke up her monotonous solitude, to call off the dog, who
generally grew fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was
commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally
got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and
death in those fever-stricken abodes--a wan mother nursing one dying
child, with perhaps another dead in the house.
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