un of three or four hundred miles, though, is scarcely worth
mentioning by way of showing what an auto can do in a real endurance
contest. A much more notable trip was the non-stop run from Jackson,
Michigan, to Bangor, Maine, in November, 1909, by E.P. Blake and Dr.
Charles Percival. The distance of 1,600 miles was covered in 123 hours,
which meant traveling at an average speed of 13 miles an hour in rain
and snow and mud over country roads at their worst. In all that time
the motor never once stopped. In the Munsey historical tour of 1910 a
Brush single-cylinder car covered the 1,550 miles of a schedule
designed for big cars and came through with a perfect score. If you
know the hill roads of Pennsylvania you'll realize what that means in
the way of car performance.

Still more remarkable endurance tests are the transcontinental trips
which are undertaken so frequently nowadays that they no longer attract
attention. One such trip which shows what very little trouble an
automobile gives when handled with reasonable care was that made in
1909 by George C. Rew, W.H. Aldrich, Jr., R.A. Luckey, and H.G. Toney.
Traveling by daylight only, they made the journey of 2,800 miles from
San Francisco to Chicago in nineteen days in a Stearns car. They might
have done better if they had not loitered along the way. On one
occasion they stopped to haul water a distance of twenty-five miles for
some cowboys on a round-up. The motor gave no trouble whatever, while
the only trouble with tires was a single puncture caused by a spike
when they tried to avoid a bad stretch of road by running on a railroad
track.

The time record from ocean to ocean was held by L.L. Whitman, who left
New York in a Reo four-thirty at 12.01 A.M. on Monday, August 8, 1910,
and arrived in San Francisco on the 18th, covering the 3,557 miles in
10 days 15 hours and 13 minutes. This achievement may be more fully
appreciated by comparing it with the transcontinental relay race in
which a courier carried a message from President Taft to President
Chilberg, of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, in September-October,
1909, in 10 days 5 hours, by using thirty-two cars and as many
different drivers who knew the roads over which they ran.

Those who are fortunate enough to have friends who own cars know that
automobiles can climb hills; and that the accepted way to do it is to
throw in the extra special high gear, tear the throttle out by the
roots, advance the spark