"Down a romantic Swiss glen, where scores of sylvan nooks and rippling
rills invite one to cast about for fairies and sprites," is the word
descriptive of my route from Marcellus next morning. Once again, on
nearing the Camillus outlet from the narrow vale, I hear the sound of
Sunday bells, and after the church-bell-less Western wilds, it seems to
me that their notes have visited me amid beautiful scenes, strangely
often of late. Arriving at Camillus, I ask the name of the sparkling
little stream that dances along this fairy glen like a child at play,
absorbing the sun-rays and coquettishly reflecting them in the faces of
the venerable oaks that bend over it like loving guardians protecting
it from evil. My ears are prepared to hear a musical Indian name -
"Laughing-Waters " at least; but, like a week's washing ruthlessly intruding
upon love's young dream, falls on my waiting ears the unpoetic misnomer,
"Nine-Mile Creek." Over good roads to Syracuse, and from thence my route
leads down the Erie Canal, alternately riding down the canal tow-path,
the wagon-roads, and between the tracks of the New York Central Railway.
On the former, the greatest drawback to peaceful cycling is the towing-mule
and his unwarrantable animosity toward the bicycle, and the awful,
unmentionable profanity engendered thereby in the utterances of the
boatmen. Sometimes the burden of this sulphurous profanity is aimed at
me, sometimes at the inoffensive bicycle, or both of us collectively,
but oftener is it directed at the unspeakable mule, who is really the
only party to blame. A mule scares, not because he is really afraid, but
because he feels skittishly inclined to turn back, or to make trouble
between his enemies - the boatmen, his task-master, and the cycler, an
intruder on his exclusive domain, the Erie tow-path. A span of mules
will pretend to scare, whirl around, and jerk loose from the driver, and
go "scooting" back down the tow-path in a manner indicating that nothing
less than a stone wall would stop them; but, exactly in the nick of time
to prevent the tow-line jerking them sidewise into the canal, they stop.