CHAPTER IV

STAGECOACHES AND FREIGHTERS

HE great work of building and keep

TH ing in repair the Cumberland Road,

and of operating it, developed a race of men as unknown before its era as afterward. For the real life of the road, however, one will look to the days of its prime to those who passed over its stately stretches and dusty coils as stage- and mail-coach drivers, express carriers and "wagoners," and the tens of thousands of passengers and immigrants who composed the public which patronized the great highway. This was the real life of the road— coaches numbering as many as twenty traveling in a single line; wagonhouse yards where a hundred tired horses rested over night beside their great loads; hotels where seventy transient guests have been served breakfast in a single morning; a life made cheery by the echoing horns of

hurrying stages; blinded by the dust of droves of cattle numbering into the thousands; a life noisy with the satisfactory creak and crunch of the wheels of great wagons carrying six and eight thousand pounds of freight east or west.

The revolution of society since those days could not have been more surprising. The change has been so great it is a wonder that men deign to count their gain by the same numerical system. As Macaulay has said, we do not travel today, we merely 66 arrive." You are hardly a traveler now unless you cross a continent. Travel was once an education. This is growing less and less true with the passing years. Fancy a journey from St. Louis to New York in the old coaching days, over the Cumberland and the old York Roads. How many persons the traveler met! How many interesting and instructive conversations were held with fellow travelers through the long hours; what customs, characters, foibles, amusing incidents would be noticed and remembered, ever afterward furnishing the information necessary to help one talk well and the sympathy

necessary to render one capable of listening to others. The traveler often sat at table with statesmen whom the nation honored, as well as with stagecoach-drivers whom a nation knew for their skill and prowess with six galloping horses. Henry Clays and "Red" Buntings dined together, and each made the other wiser, if not better. The greater the gulf grows between the rich and poor, the more ignorant do both become, particularly the rich. There was undoubtedly a monotony in stagecoach journeying, but the continual views of the landscape, the ever-fresh air, the constantly passing throngs of various description, made such traveling an experience unknown to us "arrivers" of today. How fast it has been forgotten that travel means seeing people rather than things. The age of sight-seeing has superseded that of traveling. How few of us can say with the New Hampshire sage: "We have traveled a great deal in Concord.' Splendidly are the old coaching days described by Thackeray, who caught their spirit:

"The Island rang, as yet, with the tooting hornsand rattling teams of mail-coaches;

a gay sight was the road in merry England in those days, before steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and chivalry over. To travel in coaches, to drive coaches, to know coachmen and guards, to be familiar with inns along the road, to laugh with the jolly hostess in the bar, to chuck the pretty chambermaid under the chin, were the delight of men who were young not very long ago. The Road was an institution, the Ring was an institution. Men rallied around them; and, not without a kind conservatism, expatiated upon the benefits with which they endowed the country, and the evils which would occur when they should be no more: decay of English spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin of the breed of horses, and so forth, and so forth. To give and take a black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation of generous youth. Is there any young fellow of the present time who aspires to take the place of a stoker? You see occasionally in Hyde Park one dismal old drag with a lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rat

tling Quicksilver,' O swift Defiance?' You are passed by racers stronger and swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has died away.'

60

In the old coaching days the passengerand mail-coaches were operated very much like the railways of today. A vast network of lines covered the land. Great companies owned hundreds of stages operating on innumerable routes, competing with other companies. These rival stage companies fought each other at times with great bitterness, and competed, as railways do today, in lowering tariff and in outdoing each other in points of speed and accommodation.61 New inventions and appliances were eagerly sought in the hope of securing a larger share of public patronage. This competition extended into every phase of the business-fast horses, comfortable coaches, well-known and companionable drivers, favorable connections.

60 Thackeray's The Newcomes, vol. i, ch. x.

61 In one instance a struggle between two stagecoach lines in Indiana resulted in carrying passengers from Richmond to Cincinnati for fifty cents. The regular price was five dollars,