Soon we were obliged to turn back to the road and take our chances on a long steady pull on the slow gear.  Again and again it seemed as if the motor would stop; several times it was necessary to throw out the clutch, let the motor race, and then throw in the clutch to get the benefit of both the motor and the momentum of the two-hundred pound fly-wheel; it was a strain on the chain and gears, but they held, and the machine would be carried forward ten or twelve feet by the impetus; in that way the worst spots were passed.

Towards Utica the roads were better, though we nearly came to grief in a low place just outside the city.

It required all Wednesday morning to clean and overhaul the machine.  Every crevice was filled with mud, and grit had worked into the chain and every exposed part.  There was also some lost motion to be taken up to stop a disagreeable pounding.  The strain on the new chain had stretched it so a link had to be taken out.

It was two o’clock before we left Utica.  A little beyond the outskirts of the city the road forks, the right is the road to Syracuse, and it is gravelled most of the way.  Unfortunately, we took the left fork, and for seven miles ploughed through red clay, so sticky that several times we just escaped being stalled.  It was not until we reached Clinton that we discovered our mistake and turned cross country to the right road.  The cross-road led through a low boggy meadow that was covered with water, and there we nearly foundered.  When the hard gravel of the turnpike was reached, it was with a feeling of irritation that we looked back upon the time wasted in the horrible roads we need not have taken.

The day was bright, and every hour of sun and wind improved the roads, so that by the time we were passing Oneida Castle the going was good.  It was dark when we passed through Fayetteville; a little beyond our reserve gallon of gasoline was put in the tank and the run was made over the toll-road to Syracuse on “short rations.”

A well-kept toll-road is a boon in bad weather, but to the driver of an automobile the stations are a great nuisance; one is scarcely passed before another is in sight; it is stop, stop, stop.  There are so many old toll-roads upon which toll is no longer collected that one is apt to get in the habit of whizzing through the gates so fast that the keepers, if there be any, have no time to come out, much less to collect the rates.

It was cold the next morning when we started from Syracuse, and it waxed colder and colder all day long.

The Endurance Contest followed the direct road to Rochester, going by way of Port Byron, Lyons, Palmyra, and Pittsford.  That road is neither interesting nor good.  Even if one is going to Rochester, the roads are better to the south; but as we had no intention of visiting the city again, we took Genesee Street and intended to follow it into Buffalo.

The old turnpike leads to the north of Auburn and Seneca Falls, but we turned into the Falls for dinner.  In trying to find and follow the turnpike we missed it, and ran so far to the north that we were within seven or eight miles of Rochester, so near, in fact, that at the village of Victor the inhabitants debated whether it would not be better to run into Rochester and thence to Batavia by Bergen rather than southwest through Avon and Caledonia.