Not far from Three Rivers we came to a horse tethered among the trees by the road-side; of course, on hearing and seeing the automobile and while we were yet some distance away, it broke its tether and was off on a run up the road, which meant that unless some one intervened it would fly on ahead for miles. Happily, in this instance some men caught the animal after it had gone a mile or two, we, meanwhile, creeping on slowly so as not to frighten it more. Loose horses in the road make trouble. There is no one to look after them, and nine times out of ten they will go running ahead of the machine, like frightened deer, for miles. If the machine stops, they stop; if it starts, they start; it is impossible to get by. All one can do is to go on until they turn into a farmyard or down a cross-road.
The road led into Toledo, but we were told that by turning east at
Perrysburg, some miles southwest of Toledo, we would have fifty
miles or more of the finest road in the world—the famous Perry's
Pike.
All day long we lived in anticipation of the treat to come; at
each steep hill and when struggling in the sand we mentioned
Perry's Pike as the promised land. When we viewed it, we felt with
Moses that the sight was sufficient.
In its day it must have been one of the wonders of the West, it is so wide and straight. In the centre is a broad, perfectly flat, raised strip of half-broken limestone. The reckless sumptuousness of such a highway in early days must have been overpowering, but with time and weather this strip of stone has worn into an infinite number of little ruts and hollows, with stones the size of cocoanuts sticking up everywhere. A trolley-line along one side of this central stretch has not improved matters.
Perry's Pike is so bad people will not use it; a road alongside the fence has been made by travel, and in dry weather this road is good, barring the pipes which cross it from oil-wells, and the many stone culverts, at each of which it is necessary to swing up on to the pike. The turns from the side road on to the pike at these culverts are pretty sharp, and in swinging up one, while going at about twenty-five miles an hour, we narrowly escaped going over the low stone wall into the ditch below. On that and one other occasion the Professor took a firmer hold of the side of the machine, but, be it said to the credit of learning, at no time did he utter an exclamation, or show the slightest sign of losing his head and jumping—as he afterwards remarked, "What's the use?"
To any one by the roadside the danger of a smash-up seems to come and pass in an instant—not so to the person driving the machine; to him the danger is perceptible a very appreciable length of time before the critical point is reached.
The secret of good driving lies in this early and complete appreciation of difficulties and dangers encountered. "Blind recklessness" is a most expressive phrase; it means all the words indicate, and is contra-distinguished from open-eyed or wise recklessness.
The timid man is never reckless, the wise man frequently is, the fool always; the recklessness of the last is blind; if he gets through all right he is lucky.
It is reckless to race sixty miles an hour over a highway; but the man who does it with his eyes wide open, with a perfect appreciation of all the dangers, is, in reality, less reckless than the man who blindly runs his machine, hit or miss, along the road at thirty miles an hour—the latter leaves havoc in his train.
One must have a cool, quick, and accurate appreciation of the margin of safety under all circumstances; it is the utilization of this entire margin—to the very verge—that yields the largest results in the way of rapid progress.
Every situation presents its own problem—a problem largely mechanical—a matter of power, speed, and obstructions; the chauffeur will win out whose perception of the conditions affecting these several factors is quickest and clearest.
One man will go down a hill, or make a safe turn at a high rate of speed, where another will land in the ditch, simply because the former overlooks nothing, while the latter does. It is not so much a matter of experience as of natural bent and adaptability. Some men can drive machines with very little experience and no instructions; others cannot, however long they try and however much they are told.
Accidents on the road are due to
Defects in the road,
Defects in the machine, or
Defects in the driver.
American roads are bad, but not so bad that they can, with justice, be held responsible for many of the troubles attributed to them.
The roads are as they are, a practically constant—and, for some time to come—an unchangeable quantity. The roads are like the hills and the mountains, obstacles which must be overcome, and machines must be constructed to overcome them.
Complaints against American roads by American manufacturers of automobiles are as irrelevant to the issue as would be complaints on the part of traction-engine builders or wagon makers. Any man who makes vehicles for a given country must make them to go under the conditions—good, bad, or indifferent—which prevail in that country. In building automobiles for America or Australia, the only pertinent question is, "What are the roads of America or Australia?" not what ought they to be.
The manufacturer who finds fault with the roads should go out of the business.
Roads will be improved, but in a country so vast and sparsely settled as North America, it is not conceivable that within the next century a net-work of fine roads will cover the land; for generations to come there will be soft roads, sandy roads, rocky roads, hilly roads, muddy roads—and the American automobile must be so constructed as to cover them as they are.
The manufacturer who waits for good roads everywhere should move his factory to the village of Falling Waters, and sleep in the Kaatskills.
Machines which give out on bad roads, simply because the roads are bad, are faultily constructed.
Defects in roads, to which mishaps may be fairly attributed, are only those unlooked for conditions which make trouble for all other vehicles, such as wash-outs, pit-holes, weak culverts, broken bridges—in short, conditions which require repairs to restore the road to normal condition. The normal condition may be very bad; but whatever it is, the automobile must be constructed so as to travel thereon, else it is not adapted to that section of the country.
It may be discouraging to the driver for pleasure to find in rainy weather almost bottomless muck and mud on portions of the main travelled highway between New York and Buffalo, but that, for the present, is normal. The manufacturer may regret the condition and wish for better, but he cannot be heard to complain, and if the machine, with reasonably careful driving, gives out, it is the fault of the maker and not the roads.
It follows, therefore, that few troubles can be rightfully attributed to defects in the road, since what are commonly called defects are conditions quite normal to the country.
It was nearly six o'clock when we arrived at Fremont. The streets were filled with people in gala attire, the militia were out—bands playing, fire-crackers going—a belated Fourth of July.
When we stopped for water, we casually asked a small patriot—
"What are you celebrating?"
"The second of August," was the prompt reply. I left it to the Professor to find out what had happened on the second of August, for the art of teaching is the concealment of ignorance.
With a fine assumption of his very best lecture-room manner, the Professor leaned carelessly upon the delicate indicator on the gasoline tank and began:
"That was a great day, my boy."
"Yes, sir, it was."
"And it comes once a year."
"Why, sure."
"Ahem—" in some confusion, "I mean you celebrate once a year."