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Show The Old National Pike. The traffic seemed like a friez with an endless procession of figures. There were some sixteen gaily painted coaches each way a day. The cattle and sheep were never out of sight. The canvas-covered coaches were drawn by six or twelve horses with bows of bells over their collars; the families of statesmen and merchants went by in private vehicles; and while most of the travelers were unostentatious, a few had splendid equipages, and employed outriders. Some of the passes through the Alleghenies were as precipitous as any in the sierra Nevada, and the mountains were as wild. Within a mile of the road the country was a wilderness, but on the highway the traffic was as dense and as continuous as in the main street of a large town. The national road proper was built from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, Virginia, by the United States Government, the intention being to establish it as far as St. Louis. It was excellently macadamized; the rivers and creeks were spanned by stone bridges; the distances were indexed by iron mile posts, and the toll houses supplied with strong iron gates. Its projector and chief supporter was Henry Clay, whose services in its behalf are commemorated by a monument near Wheeling. Henry Beeson, a former Congressman, was also an advocate of it, and on one occasion he made a public speech in which he showed the audience - so flexible is arithmetic combined with imagination - that from the number of horseshoes it would necessitate, and the number of nails, it was better adapted to promote trade than any railway could be. From Cumberland to Baltimore the road, or a large part of it, was built by certain banks of Maryland, which were rechartered in 1816 on condition that they should complete the work. So far from being a burden to them, it proved to be a most lucrative property for many years, yielding as much as twenty per centy, and it is only of late years that it has yielded no more than two or three per cent. The part built by the Federal Government was transferred to Maryland some time ago, and the tolls became a political perquisite. But within the past year it has been acquired by the counties of Allegbouy and Garrett, which have made it free. We have written of what is past. The canal and the railway have superseded the old national "pike," and it is not often now that a traveler disturbs the dust that lies upon it. The dust itself, indeed, has settled and given root to the grass and ??? , which in many places ??? ??? decadence is. The black snakes, moccasins and copperheads, that were always plentiful in the mountains, have become so unused to the intrusion of man that they sun themselves in the road, and a vehicle cannot pass without running over them. Many of the villages which were prosperous in the coaching days have fallen asleep, and the wagon of a peddler or farmer is alone seen where once the travel was enormous. The men who were actively on the road as drivers, station agents and mail contractors are nearly all dead. The few that remain are very old, and while an inquiry about the past reanimates them for a moment, they soon lapse into the oblivion of their years. But the taverns, with their hospitable and picturesque fronts, the old smithies, and the toll-gates, have not been entirely swept away. Enough has been left undespoiled to sustain the interest and individuality of the highway, which, from Frederick to Cumberland, is rich by dower Of Nature, independent of its past. W.H. Riding, in Harper's Magazine. |