516 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



pork, and pork and trout, and trout with or without pork, and pork with 

 or without trout, according to the taste and fancy of the person porking or 

 trouting, either or both respectively. 



At Colebrook, as I said, we began on pork. It was the first I had expe- 

 rienced, and I thought it considerably great. Subsequent events, how- 

 ever, succeeded in eradicating that notion from my bosom. 



Leaving Colebrook, we started for the Dixville Notch. We inquired the 

 state of the route before starting, and were informed that, "in some places, 

 it wasn't so good as others," which was about the extent of the informa- 

 tion to be obtained. The people of New Hampshire are remarkably cautious 

 in their statements, and not at all prone to exaggeration, and when we 

 learned that our route was "in some jjlaces a little rough," we thought to 

 have a comparatively easy time of it. But, shades and ministers of grace 

 defend us ! people surrounded by the comforts of civilized life can have no 

 idea of what roads are, or rather what a road can be, if it only has a mind 

 to. In the first place, it is like going up and down the side of a house. 

 In going down a steep pitch, a bottle was jolted out of the rear of the 

 wagon, and fell over the horses' heads. That's a fact ! I have the affida- 

 vits. In addition, the way is impeded by immense granite boulders, a 

 number of feet one way, and as many the other, which seem to have been 

 shaken out of a bag, with the profusion of a pepper-box. Then, again, 

 there is no road to speak of at all, it having been abandoned, as we after- 

 ward learned, some ten years past ; the rain also has washed out deep 

 gulleys, where your wheels are on each side, and your horses down below, 

 underneath the wagon. But the crowning feature is the bridges. Bridges 

 here are made to let people through into the water ; for that purpose they 

 have large holes in them, loosely covered with brush-wood, and when the 

 unwary traveller steps upon it, he is seen no more ; and when they can't 

 get holes big enough, they have immense logs rotted to the proper point, 

 aiid when you step upon them the log caves, as it were, and you then per- 

 ceive the exact purpose for which the structure was intended, as above 

 stated. We came to one of these bridges, and two of us, having some idea 

 relative to personal safety, declined crossing in the wagon, and got out to 

 see it go down, and sure enough, when the near horse got in the middle, 

 away went the whole concern, and the animal went through into the bot- 

 tom of the creek. 



It was not, however, so deep but that, by a judicious use of his fore-legs, 

 he could crawl out of the hole through which he had gone down, and he 

 came up on terra firma a wet, and, to some extent, an agitated quadruped. 



