Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
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<p>The water in the stream was clear and sparkling, the current swift, and the bottom filled with huge sharp rocks. Mr. Winton pulled in the lever, the machine forged ahead. Splash and bump, bump and splash. Front wheels struck something big and hard, they went up in the air and when coming down, almost at the east bank, the right front wheel with a wet tire struck a wet slanting rock. The wheel was hard put, something must give way—and it did. The front axle on the right side sustained an injury, and after a lurch ahead the machine came to a sudden standstill.
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<p>From Auburn the climb commenced, and when Colfax was reached and passed, Mr. Winton was busy with his skillful knowledge in crowding the machine up steep mountain grades, along dangerous shelf roads from which one might look deep into canons and listen to the distant roaring of rushing waters below.
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<p>Mr. Winton said to me: "Do you know what we are up against here? I told the Plain Dealer I would put this enterprise through If it were possible. Right here we are met by the impossible. Under present conditions no automobile can go through this quicksand." I suggested loading the machine and sending it by freight to Winnemucca. "No, sir," he flashed back emphatically. "If we can't do it on our own power this expedition ends right here, and I go back with a knowledge of conditions and an experience such as no automobilist in this or any other country has gained."
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<p>Since the day in the snow banks, I have called it to Mr. Winton's mind. He says that the frightful experiences of that day, the abuse and hardship to which the machine was subjected, stay in his mind like the remembrance of an ugly nightmare. During the entire day, working up there among the clouds, we were cold and drenched. When it did not rain, it snowed or hailed.
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<p>We at last got through the New Hampshire Rocks and began calculating what would be our fate in the snow immediately to be encountered. The Cascade Creek, swollen by the melting mountain snows to river proportions, caused a halt about one-half mile west from the commencement of what was expected to be bothersome snow.
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<p>After twelve hours' severe experience and the rain still pouring down, halt is made abreast of a lane leading to a ranchman's home. This ranchman is A. W. Butler. He came down to the road and replying to interrogations tells you that to Rio Vista, nine miles ahead, the road is particularly bad because of plowing and grading. Arrangements are made for our staying all night with him. The machine is run in his barn, we eat supper with intense relish, go to bed and get up early to find more rain, but a breaking up of the clouds with prospect of sunshine later.
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<p>Ordinarily there would be great danger in speed under such conditions—and there may have been risk to life and limb at the time, but I knew Mr. Winton, I knew him for his skill and that there was no call for nervousness with him at the wheel, so I sat back and enjoyed the scenery.
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<p>Rock roads and deep snow in the high Sierras were encountered and mastered, streams were forded and washouts passed, adobe mud into which the machine sank deep and became tightly imbedded failed to change the plucky operator's mind about crowding the motor eastward toward the hoped-for goal. It was the soft, shifting, bottomless, rolling sand—not so bad to look upon from car windows, but terrible when actually encountered— that caused the abandonment of the enterprise and resulted in the announcement by wire to eastern newspaper connections that the trip was "off."
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<p>We walked back to Summit Station and stayed at the hotel that night. Next morning, aided by some kindly disposed railroad men who could handle shovels most effectively, the machine was dislodged.
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<p>Mill City was reached shortly before 5 o'clock. The Southern Pacific agent there said we could never get to Winnemucca (thirty miles to the east) that night because of the sand hills; the quicksand would bury us, he said. Another man who came up discussed the sand proposition with Mr. Winton and told him that there would be only one way in which "that there thing" could get through this thirty miles' stretch of quicksand. "How?" asked Mr. Winton. "Load her on a flat car and be pulled to Winnemucca."
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<p>Next morning, May 22, at 6:45 o'clock, the ascent was recommenced. Up and up we went, winding around and turning in many directions--but always up. From Gold Run we passed along through Dutch Flat, Towle, Blue Canon, Emigrant Gap, Cisco, and on to Cascade. Roads became particularly rugged after leaving Gold Run, and when we reached Emigrant Gap the few inhabitants who make that their home told us fully what rock roads and snow deposits would have to be encountered between their station and across the summit down to Donner Lake.
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<p>Monday, May 27, started 6 A.M. from Hobart Mills, and that afternoon, toward evening, reached Wadsworth, Nev., the western gate to one of the worst patches of desert sand in that section. That day was another of rain. The early morning hours were bright, but when Reno, Nev., was left behind the skies changed from blue to white, then to a dark color and the clouds that had so quickly formed opened and spilled their contents about and upon us.
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<p>On the following morning (May 24) at 7 o'clock, the repair had been completed. When darkness enveloped us that evening, the machine had covered seventeen miles. And such a day of battle. When it was over, we had reached and passed the summit of the high Sierras, the machine was hard and fast in a snow bank at the bottom of "Tunnel No. 6 hill," a treacherous descent, along which there was great peril every moment.
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<p>Two miles of it were covered. Progress was slow, the sand became deeper and deeper as we progressed. At last the carriage stopped, the driving wheels sped on and cut deep into the bottomless sand. We used block and tackle, got the machine from its hole, and tried again. Same result. Tied more ropes around wheels with the hope that the corrugation would give them sufficient purchase in the sand. Result: wheels cut deeper in less time than before.
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<p>The officials of the Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber Company (the "company" owns the town and all there is in it) were particularly generous in bestowing upon us many courtesies and making the time we spent with them in Hobart Mills that of delightful remembrance.
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<p>We found the roads somewhat improved and on and on we went through that vast country of magnificent distances. We were in the country where rattlesnakes were thickest, near Pyramid Rock, of which one writer says: "This rock pyramid is alleged to be the home of rattlesnakes so numerous as to defy extermination."
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<p>Pull out block and tackle, wade around in the mud, get soaked to the skin and chilled from the effects of the deluge, make fastenings to the fence or telephone post and pull. Pull hard, dig your heels into the mud, and exert every effort at command. The machine moves, your feet slip and down in the mud you go full length. Repeat the dose and continue the operation until the machine is free from the ditch and again upon the road.
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<p>Tie ropes around the tires to prevent slipping. It may help some, but the measure is not entirely effective, for down in the bog you find yourself soon again and once more the block and tackle are brought into play. Slow work—not discouraging in the least, but a bit disagreeable, considering that it is the first day out and you are anxious to make a clever initial run.
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<p>All morning the sky, which during the three weeks preceding had been clear and bright, was heavy with clouds. Before the opposite bank of the Sacramento was touched, the clouds opened. And what an opening it was. Adobe roads when dry and hard hold out opportunities for good going, but when the sponge-like soil is soaked with moisture, when your wheels cut in, spin around, slip and slide from the course and suddenly your machine is off the road and into the swamp ditch—buried to the axles in the soft "doby"—then the fun begins.
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<p>When out of the machine and walking around bunches of sage brush care was exercised in keeping out of striking range of these venomous reptiles. Mr. Winton has some tail end rattles as trophies, but I was not so anxious to get close enough to kill the snakes and cut off their tails.
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