Road Scrapings: Coaches and Coaching

by M. E. Haworth

In the old days of “fly-waggons,”[8] the only means of transit for heavy goods, except by canal, the cart horse was an animal now almost extinct. He was never expected to move beyond a walk, but this walk was almost perpetual motion. He took all his food, and I may say his rest, while strolling along by day and night in the waggon. The halting-places were few and far between, and were made more for the accommodation of the few passengers who were carried in the “crate”[9] than for the convenience of the horses. In those days the brewers and millers emulated each other in the size and condition of their horses; one constantly met in the streets of London a mountain of a horse, seventeen and a half hands high, loaded with flesh, legs like an elephant, drawing one small nine-gallon cask (perhaps empty) upon a truck. Mais tout cela est changé.

All waggons are now vans, cart horses machiners, and must trot at least six miles an hour. We now take for our model the Clydesdale and the Suffolk in preference to the Flemish and the Yorkshire. Even in agricultural work the style of horses and the rate of ploughing is widely different from that of half a century ago. In this particular the afternoon of the worn-out coach horse or hunter is rendered less irksome to him than formerly, as he can more readily accommodate himself to a good fair walk than to be always snatching at the chains only to find he must come back to his partners.

Weight in a horse is a great element in his composition for purposes of heavy draught; but it should be taken into consideration that he has to carry that weight in addition to the work which is expected from him; and for every ounce by which he is assisted in weight, his strain in draught is increased three pounds, and so on proportionately.

Treating the subject of draught, there is no more practical illustration of the way in which the subject is understood by the animals themselves than is afforded by the long string of mules which are attached to carriages, both private and public, in crossing the Alps. The mode of putting them together is by having two at the wheel, with a continuous long string in single file before them, often as many as seventeen or twenty. The intelligence shown by these animals in threading the side of a mountain by a zigzag road is remarkable. Each mule, as he arrives at the angle, ceases to pull, apparently knowing that having turned out of the straight line the weight of his draught would be rather an impediment to progress.

I write feelingly upon the instinct of the Italian mules, having been once indebted to their sagacity and obedience for my escape from what might have been a very serious accident.

I was travelling from Turin to Paris. The journey over Mont Cenis was then only to be performed by Fell’s railway, or by the road, by diligence or private carriage. I took the latter, making a contract for the posting, and not binding the maître de poste to any limited number of mules for the ascent. It was in the month of December, and at the time I left Susa, at five P.M., the snow was falling so thickly that by the time I had completed half the ascent, the road or track was completely obliterated. It was a beautiful moonlight night. I was lost in admiration of the manner in which the nine mules, attached to a light travelling carriage, wended their way over the trackless snow.

The stupendous mountains, clothed in all the sombre grandeur of their winter attire, surged up before me, peeping, as it were, into the deep chasms beneath, on the very verge of which the mules moved cautiously along.

It was wonderful to watch, where the road twisted and turned almost at right angles, the careful manner in which each animal in turn dropped out of his work till they were again in the straight running.

Notwithstanding the beauty of the scenery and the interest with which I watched the long string of mules, which appeared at times to be actually balancing themselves upon the narrow ledges, I was not without anxiety, partly, perhaps, on account of a friend to whom I had given a seat in my carriage. He had recently broken his leg at Turin, and was taking the earliest opportunity of a safe escort to London.