Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 5).djvu/202

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198
THE OLD GLADE ROAD

checked by a large log, or broken tree top, tied with a rope to the back of the wagon and dragged along on the ground. In other places, the road was so sideling that all the men who could be spared were required to pull at the side stays, or short ropes attached to the upper side of the wagons, to prevent their upsetting. . . All this part of the country, and as far east as Carlisle, had been, about twenty-five years before, depopulated by the depredations of the Indians. Many of the present inhabitants well remembered those days of trial, and could not see these helpless women and children moving so far away into the wilderness as Ohio, without expressing their fears. . . Three days after . . they reached the little village of Bedford. During this period they had crossed "Sideling Hill," forded some of the main branches of the Juniata, and threaded the narrow valleys along its borders. Every few miles long strings of pack-horses met them on the road, bearing heavy burthens of peltry and ginseng, the two main articles of export from the regions west of the mountains. Others overtook them loaded