Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/131

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AN EXPLORER'S NOTES
123

found there was more than one Dry Ridge, though one brown countryman informed me that ridges were the only things in that country that were dry. After following what seemed my best course for half a day, I put in at a snug-looking cottage for further directions. On the lawn I found two aged men, one leaning on a cane on one side and his comrade on the other. Receiving the hearty salutation usual from these hospitable people, I then asked my question. I found I had been traveling in the wrong direction—but lo! there stood unsteadily before me one of the old-time frontiersmen who knew the Monongahela trail as well as I did the Baltimore and Ohio railway.

My visit here in that little cottage was of utmost, timely inspiration; for wherever you find them, these few trembling men of the olden day are more than glad to find others interested in the days which they are living over and over as they sit idly awaiting a long, hard life's end.

Suffice it that I found Dry Ridge and learned all the course of the old thoroughfare from the Ohio to the Monongahela.