| Over | 10, | not | exceeding | 60 | miles, | 8 | cents. | |
| " | 60 | " | " | 100 | " | 10 | " | |
| " | 100 | " | " | 150 | " | 12 | " | |
| " | 150 | " | " | 200 | " | 15 | " | |
| " | 200 | " | " | 250 | " | 17 | " | |
| " | 250 | " | " | 350 | " | 20 | " | |
| " | 350 | " | " | 450 | " | 22 | " | |
| For | 450 | " | 25 | "” | ||||
Double letters are charged double; and triple letters, three times these rates, and a packet weighing one ounce avoirdupois at the rate of four single letters.
Let us compare conditions in these matters in America with those in Scotland. While England had, in the first half of the eighteenth century, coaches in enough number that country folk knew what they looked like, Scotland was barren not only of coaches but of carriages. In 1720 there were no chariots or chaises north of the Tay. Not till 1749 was there a coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow; this journey of forty-six miles could, by the end of the century, be done in twelve hours. In 1754 there was once a month a coach from Edinburgh to London; it took twelve to sixteen days to accomplish this journey, and was so perilous that travellers made their wills before setting out. There were few carts and no such splendid wagons as our Conestogas. Cadgers carried creels of goods on horseback; and sledges, or creels borne on the backs of women, were the means of transportation in northern Scotland until the end of the eighteenth century. These sledges had tumbling wheels of solid wood a foot and a half in diameter, revolving with the wooden axletree, and held little more than a wheelbarrow.
Scotch inns were as bad as the roads; “mean hovels with dirty rooms, dirty food, dirty attendants.” Servants without shoes or stockings, greasy tables with no cloths, butter thick with cows’ hairs, no knives and forks, a single drinking-cup for all at the table, filthy smells and sights, were universal; and this when English inns were the pleasantest places on earth.
Mail-carriage was even worse than personal transportation; hence letter-writing was not popular. In 1746 the London mail-bag once carried but a single letter from Edinburgh. So little attention was paid to the post that as late as 1728 the letters were sometimes not taken from the mail bag, and were brought back to their original starting place. Scotland was in a miserable state of isolation and gloom until the Turnpike Road Act was passed; the building of good roads made a complete revolution of all economic conditions there, as it has everywhere.
Quincy Railway Pitcher.
The first railway in America was the Quincy Railroad, or the “Experiment” Railroad, built to carry stones to Bunker Hill Monument. A tavern-pitcher, commemorative of this Quincy road, is shown here. Two views of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, printed on plates and platters in rich dark blue, are familiar to china collectors. One shows a stationary engine at the top of a hill with a number of little freight cars at a very singular angle going down a steep grade. The other displays a primitive locomotive with coachlike passenger cars.
All the first rail-cars were run by horse-power.
Peter Parley’s First Book on History says, in the chapter on Maryland:—