So it went on.
“But this is nothing at all to what it will be when we are out of London and fairly on to the Epsom road,” shouted Henry Spencer from his gig behind.
“I never saw the Carnival at Rome; but I should think it was not very unlike this,” said the General.
“This is the Carnival of London! Old Rome has its Saturnalia; modern Rome has its Carnival; America has her Independence Day; but England has her Derby, equal to all these others rolled into one,” said Francis Tredegar.
“If this is only the beginning it is worth crossing the Atlantic to see—not the Derby race only, but the Derby Day!” said the General.
“Only wait till you get to Epsom!” exclaimed Henry Spencer.
Once fairly upon the Epsom road, our friends found it as their guests had predicted. The crowd, great as it had been before, was even greater now. And it thickened with every mile; the numbers of passengers increasing twofold, tenfold, a hundred-fold, as they approached the bourne of their journey.
The road was as one vast river of human beings and brute creatures, pouring its multitudes towards Epsom. And every cross country road was as a tributary stream helping to swell the flood.
Every description of wheeled vehicles known to the civilized world—broughams, barouches, landaus, chaises, buggies, sulkies, gigs, rockaways, carryalls, omnibuses, stages, brakes, carts, drags, wagons, jaunting cars, in an endless number and variety, and drawn by every available species of quadrupeds—horses, mules, donkeys, goats, dogs, oxen—thronged and crushed and pressed together for miles and miles behind and before on the main road and up and down every branch road—crowding toward Epsom.
In this vast, moving mixed multitude the only saving feature was this, that they were all moving the same way, and all, or nearly all, in high, good humor.