A Storm of Snow

Then came the time when the rain changed to snow, and you can well fancy that if the road was wellnigh impassable before, it was soon in such a condition that one might say it would be impossible to go farther.

Even the children were forced to get out and walk again and again, and I have seen Mistress Devoll and Mistress Rouse stop many a time to pick up their shoes which had been pulled from their feet by the clinging mud.

Fancy such traveling while the snow came down like feathers, weighting every branch of the trees and every bush until they stood far out over the narrow roadway, shedding their frosty burdens upon the passer-by!

It seemed to me that I could see the horses grow weaker with each mile we advanced, and when night came, after we had traveled no more of us, for his oxen plowed their way through the mire, giving apparently no more heed to the weight of the wagon than if it had been a child's toy cart, and again and again did the old man unyoke the patient beasts in order to bring them back, at times more than half a mile over a hard road, to help one or the other than six or eight miles at the expense of the most severe labor, it was as much as we could do to keep them on their feet until the harness was removed.

This was the time when Uncle Daniel had the advantage of our wagons out of the mud, when, but for his assistance, they might have stayed there until the crack of doom, so deeply were the wheels embedded.

I can look back upon many days we spent while journeying from Massachusetts to the Ohio country with the greatest pleasure; but never do I think of the time passed among the foothills, when the weather was so bitter and the way so hard, without real mental distress, for that journey, during at least eight days, was more like some horrible nightmare than a reality.