Even the main roads were often in such a state that foot-passengers could not get along, but left the road and followed a footpath just inside the hedge.

Such footpaths ran beside the roads for miles; here and there in country places a short section of such tracks may still be found.
'Pack-roads,' too, may be occasionally met with, retaining their designation to this day.

It was the time of the great wars with the First Napoleon; and the poor people, as the wheat went up to famine prices, were often in a strait for bread.

When the miller's packhorse appeared the cottagers crowded round and demanded the price: if it had risen a penny, the infuriated mob of women would sometimes pull the miller's boy off the horse and duck him in the village pond.
The memory of those old times is still vivid in farmhouses, and at Hilary's I have myself handled old Jonathan's walking-staff, which he and his father before him used in traversing on foot those perilous roads.

It was about five feet long, perhaps more, an inch and a half in diameter, and shod with an iron ferrule and stout spike.