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the temper of the people as well as a change in the soil when the
Bonnyclabber Country was reached
The traveler at the beginning of the century noticed a change in
the temper of the people as well as a change in the soil when the
Bonnyclabber Country was reached. The time-serving attitude of
the good people of the East now gave place to a ‘consciousness of
independence’ due, Baily remarks, to the fact that each man was
self-sufficient and passed his life ‘without regard to the smiles
and frowns of men in power.’ This spirit was handsomely
illustrated in the case of one burly Westerner who was ‘churched’
for fighting. Showing a surly attitude to the deacon-judges who
sat on his case, he was threatened with civil prosecution and
imprisonment. ‘I don”t want freedom,’ he is said to have replied,
bitterly; ‘I don”t even want to live if I can”t knock down a man
who calls me a liar.’

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The streams proved serious obstacles to early traffic. It has
been shown already that the earliest routes of animal or man
sought the watersheds; the trails therefore usually encountered
one stream near its junction with another. At first, of course,
fording was the common method of crossing water, and the most
advantageous fording places were generally found near the mouths
of tributary streams, where bars and islands are frequently
formed and where the water is consequently shallow. When ferries
began to be used, they were usually situated just above or below
the fords; but when the bridge succeeded the ferry, the primitive
bridge builder went back to the old fording place in order to
take advantage of the shallower water, bars, and islands. With
the advent of improved engineering, the character of river banks
and currents was more frequently taken into consideration in
choosing a site for a bridge than was the case in the olden
times, but despite this fact the bridges of today, generally
speaking, span the rivers where the deer or the buffalo splashed
his way across centuries ago.

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