36 With Feet to the Earth 



freshet had cut off such lengths of road 

 that I had trudged just forty miles when, 

 at nine o'clock that night, I stumbled in 

 at the door of my shelter. The last six or 

 eight miles of it were hard going. Next 

 morning I felt still worse about it, for my 

 muscles well-nigh refused to work for an 

 hour after I resumed my march. Climb- 

 ing over Mount Tom, they were soon lim- 

 bered, however, and by the second night 

 the soreness and stiffness were nearly gone. 

 Quaint taverns were my usual abiding- 

 places, and the rates were cheap enough 

 then : twenty-five cents each for meals and 

 lodgings, and fair, both of them, though 

 some folks do not care for pie for breakfast. 

 As I advanced up the river the damage 

 worked by the flood became more obvi- 

 ous : many structures were torn away, miles 

 of farm and pasture were buried under 

 gravel, green banks were gullied and worn 

 down, vegetation was destroyed, roads and 

 railroads had suffered untold injury. And 

 as we cut away our forests, destroying the 

 vegetable mould, that sponge which holds 

 the rain and melting snow, these freshets 



