From New York to Buffalo there is a succession of cities and villages which are, for the most part, very attractive, but good hotels are scarce, and as for wayside inns there are none.  With the exception of Albany and one or two other cities the hotels are old, dingy, and dirty.  Here and there, as in Geneva, a new hotel is found, but to most of the cities the hotels are a disgrace.

The automobile, however, accustoms one to discomforts, and one gets so tired and hungry at night that the shortcomings of the village hotel are overlooked, or not fully realized until seen the next morning by the frank light of day.

Fonda is the occasion of these remarks upon New York hotels.

It was cloudy and threatening when we left Fonda at half-past seven the next morning, and by ten the rain began to fall so heavily and steadily that the roads, none too dry before, were soon afloat.

It was slow going.  At St. Johnsville we stopped to buy heavier rubber coats.  It did not seem possible we would get through the day without coming to a stop, but, strange to relate, the machine kept on doggedly all day, on the slow gear nearly every mile, without a break of any kind.

It was bad enough from St. Johnsville to Herkimer, but the worst was then to come.

When we came east from Utica to Herkimer, we followed the road on the north side of the valley, and recalled it as hilly but very dry and good.  The Endurance Contest was out of Herkimer, through Frankfort and along the canal on the south side of the valley.  It was a question whether to follow the road we knew was pretty good or follow the contest route, which presumably was selected as the better.

A liveryman at Herkimer said, “Take my advice and keep on the north side of the valley; the road is hilly, but sandy and drier; if you go through Frankfort, you will find some pretty fierce going; the road is level but cut up and deep with mud,—­keep on the north side.”

We should have followed that advice, the more so since it coincided with our own impressions; but at the store where we stopped for gasoline, a man who said he drove an automobile advised the road through Frankfort as the better.

It was in Frankfort that several of the contestants in the endurance run came to grief,—­right on the main street of the village.  There was no sign of pavement, macadam, or gravel, just deep, dark, rich muck; how deep no one could tell; a road so bad it spoke volumes for the shiftlessness and lack of enterprise prevailing in the village.

A little beyond Frankfort there is about a mile of State road, laid evidently to furnish inhabitants an object lesson,—­and laid in vain.

A little farther on the black muck road leads between the canal and towpath high up on the left, and a high board fence protecting the railroad tracks on the right; in other words, the highway was the low ground between two elevations.  The rains of the week before and the rains of the last two days had converted the road into a vast ditch.  We made our way slowly into it, and then seizing an opening ran up on to the towpath, which was of sticky clay and bad enough, but not quite so discouraging as the road.  We felt our way along carefully, for the machine threatened every moment to slide either into the canal on the left or down the bank into the road on the right.