There was a crisp
frost that morning, so white that till the sun rose you might have
thought there had been a slight fall of snow in the night.
We put eight of the largest hogs into one long farm wagon with high
sideboards, drawn by a span of Percheron work horses, which I drove; the
ten smaller hogs we put into another wagon that Willis Murch drove. By
making an early start we hoped to cover forty miles of our journey
before sundown, pass the night at a tavern in the town of Gray where the
old Squire was acquainted, and reach Portland the next noon. Since we
wished to avoid unloading the hogs, we took dry corn and troughs for
feeding them in the wagons and buckets for fetching water to them. The
old Squire went along with us for the first fifteen miles to see us well
on our way, then left us and walked to a railroad station a mile or two
off the wagon road, where he took the morning train into Portland, in
order to make arrangements for marketing the hogs.
Everything went well during the morning, although the hogs diffused
a bad odor along the highway. Toward noon we stopped by the wayside,
near the Upper Village of the New Gloucester Shakers, to rest and
feed the horses, and to give the hogs water.
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