Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

American Horses.

American horses are, speaking generally, better than ours. Their average character is higher. Though we probably in most classes have some animals that are more showy, and even better adapted to their work, yet certainly they have fewer poor brutes. With us everything that is in the form of a horse fetches money, from the stylish pair which everybody notices in the Park, down to the costermonger’s pony. Manifestly inferior animals do not appear to be bred at all in America. There is a point they do not fall below, and that point admits of bone and blood enough to be noticed.

Their horses have another merit also. As a general rule, they do just what is required of them, and nothing more. It is rare to see one that jibs, or shies, or stumbles, or misbehaves himself in any way. I cannot say whether it is that, being sounder in body, they are sounder also in mind; or whether it is to be attributed to some superiority in the American method of breaking in their horses; or whether the moral effects of maize are superior to those of oats; though indeed I see from the returns that in some parts of the country a large quantity of the latter kind of grain is raised.

As American drivers have more confidence in themselves and their fortune than any drivers in the world, and are ready at any moment to run any risks, this rationality and docility of their horses is a valuable quality. One frequently does not know which to admire most, the skill and nerve of the driver, or the intelligence and training of the horses. In passing over the plains you find that only some of the streams are bridged. The bridges, however, appear to one who is new to the country to be very inadequate to what is required of them. They generally consist of two long pine trees laid from bank to bank, or, if the stream is wide, from pier to pier, and then covered with a corduroy of cross pieces, sometimes a little dressed; the interstices are filled up with prairie hay, which is strewed over the whole structure. To save material and cartage, these bridges are made just wide enough for the wheels of the coach. I do not think there could have been a foot to spare on either side. There is no side railing of any kind. The driver, with four or six horses as it may happen, generally takes them at his best pace. Any hesitation, or a false step, or any kind of misconduct in any of the horses, would lead to a mishap. But then, mishaps never occur, or only so seldom as just to show that such things are not impossible. This, however, is a momentary affair, and by the time that one has noticed that the cross pieces are not fastened, but are starting and dancing under the feet of the horses and the wheels of the coach, the other side is reached.

Six-in-hand through the Mountains.

In the mountains I saw a specimen of American driving that would have astonished our old stagers of the Exeter, or the north road. We were crossing one of the inner ranges, and had been slowly toiling up a long hill, at a rate I suppose of not more than four miles an hour. At last we reached the summit of almost naked rock. The descent on the opposite side was very rapid—seven hundred feet in little more than half a mile. This has been accomplished by a series of zigzags constructed on the face of the hill, in the rudest possible way. The trunks of pine trees were laid longitudinally on what was to be the outside of the road. On the inner side some of the rock was picked down and blasted, and laid on the pine trees; and thus a road was made, as in the case of the bridges I have mentioned, to a very little greater width than that of the coach. The zigzags were short, and consequently the angles were close together. In the middle of the roadway the rock everywhere obtruded to a height sometimes of five or six inches. Any other people would have made the road more carefully, and of more durable materials, in the worst places would have put some kind of parapet to it, and would probably have used mules for the coach, making those sure-footed animals walk down the hill. But an American would consider it insufferable that the safety of the public should be ensured at a loss of a few minutes’ time daily, and that a dollar more than was absolutely necessary should be spent on a road which might in a year or two be superseded by something better, or not wanted at all. And so the way they manage it is to construct a road of the narrow scantling and in the rude fashion I have mentioned, and then to drive down it, with six fine horses, at a rate of not less than eleven miles an hour. As soon as we got to the top of the hill, the horses were put under the whip, and away we went. As we turned the corners at full speed the team appeared to be coming back on the coach; and as we rattled down the inclines the sides of the hill looked like precipices. If one horse had stumbled on the pieces of rock projecting through the road, or got frightened, or become unruly in any way, or if a piece of harness had broken, or the brake had given way, a capsize would have been inevitable, and we should have rolled over to the valley beneath.

There was an hotel at the bottom of the hill, and while we sat down to dinner (I think people must sometimes arrive at the hotel without much appetite), another team was put in for another stage, through ravines and along the edges of precipices, which would require American horses and American driving.

The hill we had just come down is called the Guy Hill. At Central City, where I was staying the next day, I asked the landlord of the hotel if anyone had been killed lately on the Guy Hill. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘no one had been killed, he was glad to say, for two or three years, but every year several persons had died of accidents on the hill.’ These accidents happen when snow is on the ground, and the horses cannot see their way, or when it is covered with ice, and they cannot get a foothold. I afterwards walked up this road, and a closer acquaintance with it only increased the respect the way in which I had been brought down it had made me feel for American horses, drivers, and coaches. I also went over the old road that had preceded it, and which was nothing but a gully of smooth rock down the side of the hill. I was unable to conceive how any vehicle could ever have been got up it or down it.

Climate in the Mountains.

The fame of these American whips is not confined to their own country; for I am told by an Australian friend, that in that part of the world it is the custom to engage the services of one of them where the roads are unusually difficult.