CHAPTER XIX.
TANDEM.
I have never been very much of a tandem driver, for having been entered upon stage coaches, and driven them for a good many hundred miles before getting hold of a tandem, I must confess I rather looked down upon it, and regarded it somewhat in the light of a toy.
The first time of my embarking in one I felt like the proverbial tin kettle to the dog's tail. There was no weight behind the horses to bring them to their collars, and they appeared to be almost drawing by my hands, like the Yankee trotters. Of course, that sensation went off after a little practice, and, though it is a team that requires careful handling, it is one exceedingly well adapted for heavy roads, as there is great strength of horse power in proportion to the load which is usually placed behind them. This not only enables one to ascend steep hills with ease, but also greatly facilitates the descent, as it is almost impossible to place a sufficient load upon only two wheels to overpower the shaft horse. It was in the act of descending hills that most coach accidents happened, by the load overpowering the wheel horses; and, of course, the load on a tandem cart can never be top heavy, which was another fertile source of accidents to coaches.
When I first tried my hand at tandem I was quartered at Chatham, and being cut off from the coaches I had been accustomed to drive, my hands itched for the double reins, and I condescended to the hitherto despised tandem; but upon my first attempt, I soon found myself brought up with the leader on one side a small tree and the wheeler on the other. Rather a humiliating position for one who thought himself a coachman! At that time, however, I little realized how much practice is required to master the science of driving, though I must confess that something short of that ought to have kept me clear of the tree.
This brings to my recollection a scene which occurred during the time I was quartered in that garrison, which throws some light on the manners and customs of military life half a century ago.
It so happened, as also occurred to Mr. Pickwick and his friends on another occasion, that a ball was held at the Assembly Rooms in Rochester, and a good sprinkling of officers from the barracks were present, among which I counted one. When the small hours of the morning were reached, and it was time to return home, another officer and I, each in full uniform, jumped on the boxes of two of what were then termed "dicky chaises," and raced nearly as fast as the old screws could gallop along the streets of Rochester and Chatham up to the barracks; and upon our arriving there the gates were thrown open, and we did not finish our race till we reached the officers' quarters.
It was, however, in the Australian colonies that I did most of my tandem driving, and as the roads in those new countries were often, to say the least of it, imperfectly made, and houses were few and far between, causing a journey of sixty or seventy miles in the day to be sometimes necessary, I found it a team by no means to be despised.
It was early in the year of 1840 that I landed at Hobart Town (now abbreviated to Hobart), from the good ship "Layton," of five hundred tons burden, after a voyage of nearly five months, which had brought out four hundred convicts, who were in those days sent out under a small military guard; and it was not long after finding myself on terra firma before the old craving took possession of me, nor long after that before it was gratified, as already a good foundation had been laid.
A dear old brother officer, many years dead, who had gone out with a previous guard, had had a tandem cart built; and he also supplied leader and harness, I finding wheeler and coachman, as he did not care for driving; so I think I had the best of it. However, both were satisfied, which is not always the case.
In that lovely island, then called Van Diemen's Land, but now Tasmania, there were many miles of roads as good as any to be found in England, constructed by convict labour, and admirably engineered over the hills. Indeed, the greater part of the one hundred and twenty miles between Hobart and Launceston was good enough for almost any pace, as I can vouch for from having driven the whole distance both ways.