CHAPTER XVII
THE PAINS OF STAGE-COACH TRAVEL
In describing the pleasures and pains, the delights and dangers, the virtues and vicissitudes of the travel of early days by stage-coach in America, I have chosen to employ largely the words and descriptions of contemporary travellers rather than any wording of my own, not only because any such description of mine would be simply a transcription of their facts, but because there is a sense of closeness of touch, a pleasant intimacy, and indeed a profound sympathy thereby established with those old travellers and modes of travel which cannot be obtained by modern wording; nor indeed can their descriptions and travellers’ tales be improved. Careless or ignorant writers often portray early stage-coach travel in America in the same terms as would be used of similar travel in England, and as having the same accessories; it was in truth very different in nearly all of its conditions, as different as were the vehicles used in America.
I do not believe that travellers in coaching days found much pleasure in long journeys by stage-coach. They doubtless enjoyed short trips, or possibly a day on a coach, as we do now, but serious travel was serious indeed. In winter it must have appeared a slow form of lingering death.
Grant Thorburn, the New York seedsman, tells of the first journey he ever made by land. It was in the winter of 1831; he was then fifty-eight years old.
“We left Hoboken with about fifteen passengers closely packed in a stage with wheels, and a very neat coach, and so foolish was I and ignorant (never having travelled on land) I thought this same fine close carriage would go through thick and thin with me all the way to Albany: in two short hours my eyes were opened. We stopped in Hackensack at a tavern grocery grogshop and post-office all under one roof, for we carried Uncle Sam’s letter bags, which was another grievance, as we had to stop every few miles to change the mails. The keeper of the office began to bluster and swear he had neither carriages covered or uncovered to forward so many passengers. He said the Jockey Club in New York took all the money and gave him all the trouble. In short, says he, unless you remain here till four o’clock P.M. you must go on with such conveyance as I can furnish. We applied to our Hoboken driver. He said his orders were to drop us at Hackensack and bring back the coaches; and sure enough he turned about and back he went. I stepped into the barroom—a large place. In the centre stood a large old-fashioned tin-plate stove, surrounded by fifteen or twenty large lazy fellows. After waiting an hour we were sent forward, viz. two in an open chair, four in an open wagon, and the remainder, eight I think, in a common Jersey farming wagon, all the machines being without covers. It now commenced raining, and by the time we got to the next stage, we looked like moving pillars of salt, our hats and coats being covered to the thickness of an eighth of an inch with ice transparents. At the town of Goshen we changed the mail, thawed our garments, and ate our dinner. As we got north the sleighing got better, so we were accommodated with a covered box and runners, but alas! it was like the man’s lantern without a candle. The cover was of white wood boards placed a quarter of an inch apart without paint, leather, or canvas to protect them from the weather.
“We travelled all night. The rain and snow descending through the roof, our hats were frozen to our capes, and our cloaks to one another. In the morning we looked like some mountain of ice moving down the Gulf Stream. I thought the machine used at the Dry Dock would have been an excellent appendage to have lifted us bodily into the breakfast room: and this is what the horse-flesh fraternity in New York advertise as their safe, cheap, comfortable, and expeditious winter establishment for Albany.”
Dalton Winter Stage.
This latter account is certainly a hard blow to the lover of the “good old times.” Of tough fibre and of vast powers of endurance, both mental and physical, must have been our grandfathers who dared to travel overland in winter time. Coaches were often “snowed up” and had to be deserted by the passengers, who were rescued in old pods and pungs, such as are shown on [pages 316] and [318], and the journey had to be continued in some of the awkward coach-bodies or “boobies” set on runners like those on [pages 362] and [364]. Coaches were also overturned or blown off bridges by heavy winds.