Hannibal is a nice, clean, respectable place; were I an American tourist I would call it a "cute little city."

I found an eating-house with a tempting smell around it, and ordered a hearty breakfast. After polishing off this meal, I mounted Lizzie and started off once more.

We were now in Missouri, the State of the small farmer. Not that the farms are so very small, but they are not on so large a scale as further on in the west, where the hundred-square-mile ranch is the order of the day.

Again the scenery experiences a quick change; the country becomes hilly and rough; one sees maize growing almost everywhere and very often pigs (or hogs as they are termed in the States) turned out to pasture. Nevertheless there is much uncleared and uncultivated land to be seen; the towns and villages are clean, modern, and well laid out, and all give an air of prosperity and plenty. Every farmer has his car, and it is generally a Ford; youngsters of twelve and fourteen can be seen driving them, and generally with as much skill as their parents, if not more.

But for all its hills and vales and the luxuriance of its natural beauty, Missouri has one great drawback. There is a very big fly in the Missouri ointment—rain. And when it rains in Missouri, it rains properly, not in tantalizing little showers as it does in England. It is as though the whole sky had burst its water-mains. It falls not in inches but feet; not for hours but for days. Then suddenly the sun breaks out and scorches everything with renewed vigour. If a car is out far from home when the rain comes, it generally has to "stay put." The rain sinks into the road and so does the car. Every car carries a set of chains for its wheels, but although they improve matters slightly, they are often futile in ploughing through the thick slime. Then come the teams of horses at five and ten and twenty dollars a time to drag the unfortunate automobile to some garage where it "lays up" until the rain has gone and the sun has dried the roads sufficiently for further progress.

Sometimes enterprising individuals do not wait for rain to bring in the shekels. I have often heard of perfectly authentic cases of a farmer deliberately flooding likely patches of the road and then waiting patiently with his horses to drag out some unfortunate victim. This seems absurd, but care is always taken to select a spot where it cannot be definitely proved that natural conditions are not entirely responsible for the result!

In the early afternoon, after a hard ride from Hannibal, punctuated at every village with a stop for the consumption of ice-cream, I reached a small town called "Bucklin." No sooner was I there than a huge black cloud appeared suddenly in the sky and a terrific windstorm rose which blew everything that was not fixed to something in all directions. For half an hour it raged. The air was thick with dust, leaves and bits of paper. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind subsided, and rain commenced in torrents. So fast did it fall and so heavy were the drops that the surface of the road was beaten into a froth which hovered all the time a few inches above the road itself. Even to walk across it was a test of skill; so slimy was the mud that one's feet slid aimlessly about in any direction but the one desired. For this reason concrete pathways are invariably provided so that pedestrians can move with comparative ease and can leave their homes and visit anyone anywhere in the town without actually touching the mud at all. These concrete pathways naturally have to cross the road in places, and when the road surrounding them is washed away, as very often happens, the result to a passing vehicle can be imagined.

Further progress being out of the question that day, I hied me to the only hotel in the place and prepared to while away the days that were to follow in writing letters, studying an obsolete almanac, and eating bad food.

It rained in a continual deluge all that day, all night and all next morning. At midday it stopped with a bump, the sun came out with another, and the birds began to sing again. At three I ventured forth with Lizzie. I had not gone a dozen yards when the back wheel slipped sideways round to the front and left me reposing in the half-baked mud. Back again for another hour's wait while the broiling sun did its work. Next time I got as far as the outskirts of the town before I decided to turn back. After another hour we started out to do or die, come what might. During the remainder of the day until dark we covered ten miles, going hard all the time. When I was not extricating myself from a spicy bit of quagmire, I was poking semi-hard mud out of the wheels and mudguards.

On one occasion I came to a sudden dip in the road, followed by an equally sudden rise. As usual there was an uninviting "slough of despond" in the hollow. After trying two or three different ruts in an effort to "get through," giving up each one in turn as hopeless, and pushing back again to where still another rut branched off from the one I was in, I eventually worked my way through. The struggle up the slope on the other side was a formidable one and was being slowly accomplished by a combination of bottom-gear driving, pushing, lifting, and "paddling." Just before the summit was reached I was thrown by a steep furrow into the ditch at the roadside, breathless, exhausted, and extremely bad-tempered.

As I was extracting myself, a young man in shirt-sleeves strolled leisurely over, hands in pockets, from a stationary car a little further on. When I had safely extricated my right leg from under the machine and hauled Lizzie on to her wheels again, the stranger spoke.

"Say, fella, does that front cylinder get hot? I've heard say that's the weak point about them four-cylinder motorsickles."

Here follows a flow of language from self entirely unprintable. The stranger opens his eyes, whistles softly, then adds, as if to turn the subject:

"Where you from?"

He remained with his hands in his pockets staring at my diminishing form. He was still there when I looked over my shoulder half a mile further on. He is probably there now!

As time went on, black clouds appeared in the sky; the sun went in; the wind rose, and a repetition of the events of the day before commenced just as I arrived in the small town of "Wheeling." The only thing to do was to eat ices until the climatic conditions adjusted themselves. This took the best part of two hours. Once again I sallied forth with Lizzie. This time in the short space of five yards I reposed gently but thoroughly in the Missouri mud, much to the amusement of the population, who had all turned out to witness my departure. Again I tried and again I fell. The whole machine seemed to act as though it were made of jelly. I gave it up on the third attempt.

"Try the railway," jeered the village comedian, pointing to a level-crossing in the distance. This amused the onlookers "considerable." For myself, I discerned a glimmer of wisdom in the suggestion.

"Look here, you guys," I retorted, "what about giving me a hand to push this as far as the depot" (I never made the fatal mistake of referring to it as a "station") "instead of looking on and grinning like a lot of schoolboys?"

It had its effect. Three or four volunteered at once. We all pushed; we slithered to right and left; we slipped over each other and ourselves. But we got there.

Riding on the sleepers was hardly humorous, but it was better than the road. They were not filled in and were very irregular. Consequently progress was slow and a trifle disjointed. The "depot" was not far away. The "line-boss" looked at me curiously, as though I were a strange offshoot from some wayward train.

"Many trains coming along this way?" I queried, wishing to know what I should have to meet, as there was only a single track, double tracks being seldom, if ever, laid in the States, and if one was unprepared it might prove embarrassing to meet a train coming in the opposite direction just in the middle of a tunnel or a bridge. American railway bridges are remarkable for their narrowness. Very often the sleepers themselves project into space, and never is there any track beyond them.

"You said it, brother," he replied, "dozens of 'em." "And what's more, there's a couple of long tunnels just a mile away—look, you can see the beginning—and beyond them there's a bridge pretty nigh half a mile long—and trains is mighty funny things to play hide and seek with, y' know!"

I was of that opinion myself. As I looked, I saw a train emerge from the tunnel ahead. I reflected that I should have been just about there by now if I hadn't stopped. I went back to Wheeling.

The next day I covered twenty miles in four hours and found myself back in Wheeling again, but this time by another road. Nothing daunted, I said nothing, clenched my teeth, and polished off another twenty until dark.

The day after I did better. The nett progress at the end of the day's work was twenty-five miles instead of twenty. I arrived at the conclusion that Missouri had one great advantage that I had hitherto overlooked. It was an excellent place to get out of!

On the next day I covered five miles in six hours, and although only forty miles or so from Kansas City, which marks the commencement of the historic Santa FÉ Trail leading to the Pacific Coast, I made a solemn vow that I would "ship" everything there by train at the next town. The next town happened to be "Excelsior Springs," twenty miles further on. The road improved considerably, and the comforting thought of civilization at so short a distance urged me on and I broke that solemn vow. I rode into Kansas City late that afternoon, a mass of bruises from head to foot, just as the speedometer showed 1,919 miles from New York. I ferreted out the Henderson agent and left Lizzie in his tender keeping.