Home Life in Colonial Days Part 15

Batteau and periagua still are used; and the gundalow, picturesque with its lateen sail, still is found on our northern New England sh.o.r.es.

The Indians had narrow foot-paths in many places through the woods. On them foot-travel was possible, though many estuaries and rivers intersected the coast; for the narrow streams could be crossed on natural ford-ways, or on rude bridges of fallen trees, which the English government ordered to be put in place.

As late as 1631 Governor Endicott would not go from Salem to Boston to visit Governor Winthrop because he was not strong enough to wade across the fords. He might have done as Governor Winthrop did the next year when he went to Plymouth to visit Governor Bradford (and it took him two days to get there); he might have been carried across the fords pickaback by an Indian guide.

The Indian paths were good, though only two or three feet wide, and in many places the savages kept the woods clear from underbrush by burning over large tracts. When King Philip's War took place, all the land around the Indian settlements in Narragansett and eastern Ma.s.sachusetts was so free of brush that hors.e.m.e.n could ride everywhere freely through the woods. Some of the old paths are famous in our history. The most so was the Bay Path, which ran from Cambridge through Marlborough, Worcester, Oxford, Brookfield, and on to Springfield and the Connecticut River. Holland's beautiful story called by the name of the path gives its history, its sentiment, and much that happened on it in olden times.

When new paths were cut through the forests, the settlers "blazed" the trees, that is, they chopped a piece of the bark off tree after tree standing on the side of the way. Thus the "blazes" stood out clear and white in the dark shadows of the forests, like welcome guide-posts, showing the traveller his way. In Maryland roads turning off to a church were marked by slips or blazes cut near the ground.

In Maryland and Virginia what were known as, and indeed are still called, rolling-roads were cut through the forest. They were narrow roads adown which hogsheads of tobacco, fitted with axles, could be drawn or rolled from inland plantations to the river or bay side; sometimes the hogsheads were simply rolled by human propulsion, not dragged on these roads.

The broader rivers soon had canoe-ferries. The first regular Ma.s.sachusetts ferry from Charlestown to Boston was in 1639. It carried pa.s.sengers for threepence apiece. From Chelsea to Boston was fourpence.

In 1636 the Cambridge ferryman charged but half a penny, as so many wished to attend the Thursday lecture in the Boston churches. We learn from the Ma.s.sachusetts Laws that often a rider had to let his horse cross by swimming over, being guided from the ferry-boat; he then paid no ferriage for the horse. After wheeled vehicles were used, these ferries were not large enough to carry them properly. Often the carriage had to be taken apart, or towed over, while the horse had his fore feet in one canoe-ferry and his hind feet in another, the two canoes being lashed together. The rope-ferry lingered till our own day, and was ever a picturesque sight on the river. As soon as roads were built there were, of course, bridges and cart-ways, but these were only between the closely neighboring towns. Usually the bridges were merely "horse-bridges" with a railing on but one side.

After the period of walking and canoe-riding had had its day, nearly all land travel for a century was on horseback, just as it was in England at that date. In 1672 there were only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain; and a man wrote a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel. Boston then had one private coach. Women and children usually rode seated on a pillion behind a man. A pillion was a padded cushion with straps which sometimes had on one side a sort of platform-stirrup. One way of progress which would help four persons ride part of their journey was what was called the ride-and-tie system. Two of the four persons who were travelling started on their road on foot; two mounted on the saddle and pillion, rode about a mile, dismounted, tied the horse, and walked on. When the two who had started on foot reached the waiting horse, they mounted, rode on past the other couple for a mile or so, dismounted, tied, and walked on; and so on. It was also a universal and courteous as it was a pleasant custom for friends to ride out on the road a few miles with any departing guest or friend, and then bid them G.o.d speed agatewards.

In 1704 a Boston schoolmistress named Madam Knights rode from Boston to New York on horseback. She was probably the first woman to make the journey, and it was a great and daring undertaking. She had as a companion the "post." This was the mail-carrier, who also rode on horseback. One of his duties was to a.s.sist and be kind to all persons who cared to journey in his company. The first regular mail started from New York to Boston on January 1, 1673. The postman carried two "portmantles," which were crammed with letters and parcels. He did not change horses till he reached Hartford. He was ordered to look out and report the condition of all ferries, fords, and roads. He had to be "active, stout, indefatigable, and honest." When he delivered his mail it was laid on a table at an inn, and any one who wished looked over all the letters, then took and paid the postage (which was very high) on any addressed to himself. It was usually about a month from this setting out of "the post" in winter, till his return. As late certainly as 1730 the mail was carried from New York to Albany in the winter by a "foot-post."

He went up the Hudson River, and lonely enough it must have been; probably he skated up when the ice was good. This mail was only sent at irregular intervals.

In 1760 there were but eight mails a year from Philadelphia to the Potomac River, and even then the post-rider need not start till he had received enough letters to pay the expenses of the trip. It was not till postal affairs were placed in the capable and responsible hands of Benjamin Franklin that there were any regular or trustworthy mails.

The journal and report of Hugh Finlay, a post-office surveyor in 1773 of the mail service from Quebec to St. Augustine, Florida, tells of the vicissitudes of mail-matter even at that later day. In some places the deputy, as the postmaster was called, had no office, so his family rooms were constantly invaded. Occasionally a tavern served as post-office; letters were thrown down on a table and if the weather was bad, or smallpox raged, or the deputy were careless, they were not forwarded for many days. Letters that arrived might lie on the table or bar-counter for days for any one to pull over, until the owner chanced to arrive and claim them. Good service could scarcely be expected from any deputy, for his salary was paid according to the number of letters coming to his office; and as private mail-carriage constantly went on, though forbidden by British law, the deputy suffered. "If an information were lodg'd but an informer wou'd get tar'd and feather'd, no jury wou'd find the fact." The government-riders were in truth the chief offenders. Any ship's captain, or wagon-driver, or post-rider could carry merchandise; therefore small sham bundles of paper, straw, or chips would be tied to a large sealed packet of letter, and both be exempt from postage paid to the Crown.

The post-rider between Boston and Newport loaded his carriage with bundles real and sham, which delayed him long in delivery. He bought and sold on commission along this road; and in violation of law he carried many letters to his own profit. He took twenty-six hours to go eighty miles. Had the Newport deputy dared to complain, he would have incurred much odium and been declared a "friend of slavery and oppression."

"Old Herd," the rider from Saybrook to New York, had been in the service forty-six years and had made a good estate. He coolly took postage of all way-letters as his perquisite; was a money carrier and transferrer, all advantage to his own pocket; carried merchandise; returned horses for travellers; and when Finlay saw him he was waiting for a yoke of oxen he was paid for fetching along some miles. A Pennsylvania post-rider, an aged man, occupied himself as he slowly jogged along by knitting mittens and stockings. Not always were mail portmanteaux properly locked; hence many letters were lost and the pulling in and out of bundles defaced the letters.

Of course so much horseback riding made it necessary to have horse-blocks in front of nearly all houses. In course of time stones were set every mile on the princ.i.p.al roads to tell the distance from town to town. Benjamin Franklin set milestones the entire way on the post-road from Boston to Philadelphia. He rode in a chaise over the road; and a machine which he had invented was attached to the chaise; and it was certainly the first cyclometer that went on that road, over which so many cyclometers have pa.s.sed during the last five years. It measured the miles as he travelled. When he had ridden a mile he stopped; from a heavy cart loaded with milestones, which kept alongside the chaise, a stone was dropped which was afterwards set by a gang of men.

A number of old colonial milestones are still standing. There is one in Worcester, on what was the "New Connecticut Path"; one in Springfield on the "Bay Path," and there are several of Benjamin Franklin's setting, one being at Stratford, Connecticut.

The inland transportation of freight was carried on in the colonies just as it was in Europe, on the backs of pack-horses. Very interesting historical evidence in relation to the methods of transportation in the middle of the eighteenth century may be found in the ingenious advertis.e.m.e.nt and address with which Benjamin Franklin raised transportation facilities for Braddock's army in 1755. This is one of his most characteristic literary productions. Braddock's appeals to the Philadelphia a.s.sembly for a rough wagon-road and wagons for the army succeeded in raising only twenty-five wagons. Franklin visited him in his desolate plight and agreed to a.s.sist him, and appealed to the public to send to him for the use of the army a hundred and fifty wagons and fifteen hundred pack-horses; for the latter Franklin offered to pay two shillings a day each, as long as used, if provided with a pack-saddle.

Twenty horses were sent with their loads to the camp as gifts to the British officers. As a good and definite list of the load one of these pack-horses was expected to carry (as well as a record of the kind of provisions grateful to an officer of that day) let me give an inventory:--

Six pounds loaf-sugar, Six pounds muscovado sugar, One pound green tea, One pound bohea tea, Six pounds ground coffee, Six pounds chocolate, One-half chest best white biscuit, One-half pound pepper, One quart white vinegar, Two dozen bottles old Madeira wine, Two gallons Jamaica spirits, One bottle flour of mustard, Two well-cured hams, One-half dozen cured tongues, Six pounds rice, Six pounds raisins, One Gloucester cheese, One keg containing 20 lbs. best b.u.t.ter.

The wagons and horses were all lost after Braddock's defeat, or were seized by the French and Indians, and Franklin had many anxious months of responsibility for damages from the owners; but I am confident the officers got all the provisions. Franklin gathered the wagons in York and Lancaster; no two English shires could have done better at that time than did these Pennsylvania counties.

In Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and Ohio, pack-horses long were used, and a pretty picture is drawn by Doddridge and many other local historians of the trains of these horses with their gay collars and stuffed bells, as, laden with furs, ginseng, and snakeroot, they filed down the mountain roads to the towns, and came home laden with salt, nails, tea, pewter plates, etc. At night the horses were hobbled, and the clappers of their bells were loosened; the ringing prevented the horses being lost. The animals started on their journey with two hundred pounds' burden, of which part was provender for horse and man, which was left at convenient relays to be taken up on the way home. Two men could manage fifteen pack-horses, which were tethered successively each to the pack-saddle of the one in front of him. One man led the foremost horse, and the driver followed the file to watch the packs and urge on the laggards. Their numbers were vast; five hundred were counted at one time in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, going westward. It was a costly method of transportation. Mr. Howland says that in 1784 the expense of carrying a ton's weight from Philadelphia to Erie by pack-horses was $249. It is interesting to note that the routes taken by those men, skilled only in humble woodcraft, were the same ones followed in later years by the engineers of the turnpikes and railroads.

As the roads were somewhat better in Pennsylvania than in some other provinces, and more needed, so wagons soon were far greater in number; indeed, during the Revolution nearly all the wagons and horses used by the army came from that state. There was developed in Pennsylvania by the soft soil of these many roads, as well as by various topographical conditions, a splendid example of a true American vehicle, one which was for a long time the highest type of a commodious freight-carrier in this or any other country--the Conestoga wagon, "the finest wagon the world has ever known." They were first used in any considerable number about 1760. They had broad wheel-tires, and one of the peculiarities was a decided curve in the bottom, a.n.a.logous to that of a galley or canoe, which made it specially fitted for traversing mountain roads; for this curved bottom prevented freight from slipping too far at either end when going up or down hill. This body was universally painted a bright blue, and furnished with sideboards of an equally vivid red. The wagon-bodies were arched over with six or eight stately bows, of which the middle ones were the lowest, and the others rose gradually to front and rear till the end bows were nearly of equal height. Over them all was stretched a strong, white, hempen cover, well corded down at the sides and ends. These wagons could be loaded up to the bows, and could carry four to six tons in weight. The rates between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were about two dollars a hundred pounds. The horses, four to seven in number, were magnificent, often matched throughout; some were all dapple-gray, or all bay. The harnesses, of best materials and appearance, were costly; each horse had a large housing of deerskin or heavy bearskin trimmed with deep scarlet fringe; while the head-stall was tied with bunches of gay ribbons. Bell-teams were common; each horse except the saddle-horse then had a full set of bells tied with high-colored ribbons.

The horses were highly fed; and when the driver, seated on the saddle-horse, drew rein on the prancing leader and flourished his fine bull-hide London whip, making the silk snap and tingle round the leader's ears, every horse started off with the ponderous load with a grace and ease that was beautiful to see.

The wagons were first used in the Conestoga valley, and most extensively used there; and the sleek powerful draught-horses known as the Conestoga breed were attached to them, hence their name. These teams were objects of pride to their owners, objects of admiration and attention wherever they appeared, and are objects of historical interest and satisfaction to-day.

Often a prosperous teamster would own several Conestoga wagons, and driving the leading and handsomest team himself would start off his proud procession. From twenty to a hundred would follow in close row.

Large numbers were constantly pa.s.sing. At one time ten thousand ran from Philadelphia to other towns. Josiah Quincy told of the road at Lancaster being lined with them. The scene on the road between the c.u.mberland valley and Greensburg, where there are five distinct and n.o.ble mountain ranges,--Tuscarora, Rays Hill, Alleghany, Laurel Hills, and Chestnut Ridge,--when a long train of white-topped Conestoga wagons appeared and wound along the mountain sides, was picturesque and beautiful with a charm unparalleled to-day.

"----Many a fleet of them In one long upward winding row.

It ever was a n.o.ble sight As from the distant mountain height Or quiet valley far below, Their snow-white covers looked like sail."

There were two cla.s.ses of Conestoga wagons and wagoners. The "Regulars,"

or men who made it their constant and only business; and "Militia." A local poet thus describes these outfits:--

"Militia-men drove narrow treads, Four horses and plain red Dutch beds, And always carried grub and feed."

They were farmers or common teamsters who made occasional trips, usually in winter time, and did some carriage for others, and drove but four horses with their wagons. The "Regulars" had broad tires, carried no feed for horses nor food for themselves, but both cla.s.ses of teamsters carried coa.r.s.e mattresses and blankets, which they spread side by side, and row after row, on the bar-room floor of the tavern at which they "put up." Their horses when unharnessed fed from long troughs. .h.i.tched to the wagon-pole. The wagons that plied between the Delaware and the small city of Pittsburgh were called Pitt-teams.

The life of the Conestoga wagon did not end even with the establishment of railroads in the Eastern states; farther and farther west it penetrated, ever chosen by emigrants and travellers to the frontiers; and at last in its old age it had an equal career of usefulness as the "prairie-schooner," in which vast numbers of families safely crossed the prairies of our far West. The white tilts of the wagons thus pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed till our own day.

Four-wheeled wagons were but little used in New England till after the War of 1812. Two-wheeled carts and sleds carried inland freight, which was chiefly transported over the snow in the winter.

The Conestoga wagon of the past century was far ahead of anything in England at that date; indeed Mr. C. W. Ernst, the best authority I know on the subject, says we had in every way far better traffic facilities at that time than England. In other ways we excelled. Though Finlay found many defects in the postal service in 1773, he also found the Stavers mail-coach plying between Boston and Portsmouth long before England had such a thing. Mr. Ernst says: "The Stavers mail-coach was stunning; used six horses when roads were bad, and never was late. They had no mail-coaches in England till after the Revolution, and I believe Ma.s.sachusetts men introduced the idea in England."

We are apt to grow retrospectively sentimental over the delights, aesthetic and physical, of ancient stage-coach days. Those days are not so ancient as many fancy. The first stage-coach which ran directly from Philadelphia to New York in 1766--and primitive enough it was--was called "the flying-machine, a good stage-wagon set on springs." Its swift trip occupied two days in good weather. It was but a year later than the original stage-coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow. At that time, in favorable weather, the coach between London and Edinburgh made the trip in thirteen days. The London mail-coach in its palmiest days could make this trip in forty-three hours and a half. As early as 1718 Jonathan Wardwell advertised that he would run a stage to Rhode Island.

In 1767 a stage-coach was run during the summer months between Boston and Providence; in 1770 a stage-chaise started between Salem and Boston and a post-chaise between Boston and Portsmouth the following year. As early as 1732 some common-carrier lines had wagons which would carry a few pa.s.sengers. Let us hear the testimony of some travellers as to the glorious pleasure of stage-coach travelling. Describing a trip between Boston and New York towards the end of the last century President Quincy of Harvard College said:--

"The carriages were old and the shackling and much of the harness made of ropes. One pair of horses carried us eighteen miles. We generally reached our resting-place for the night if no accident intervened, at ten o'clock, and after a frugal supper went to bed, with a notice that we should be called at three next morning, which generally proved to be half-past two, and then, whether it snowed or rained, the traveller must rise and make ready, by the help of a horn-lantern and a farthing candle, and proceed on his way over bad roads, sometimes getting out to help the coachman lift the coach out of a quagmire or rut, and arrived in New York after a week's hard travelling, wondering at the ease as well as the expedition with which our journey was effected."

The _Columbia Centinel_ of April 24, 1793, advertised a new line of "small genteel and easy stage-carriages" from Boston to New York with four inside pa.s.sengers, and smart horses. Many of the announcements of the day have pictures of the coaches. They usually resemble market wagons with round, canvas-covered tops, and the driver is seated outside the body of the wagon with his feet on the foot-board. Trunks were small, covered with deerskin or pigskin, studded with bra.s.s nails; and each traveller took his trunk under his seat and feet.

The poet, Moore, gives in rhyme his testimony of Virginia roads in 1800:--

"Dear George, though every bone is aching After the shaking I've had this week over ruts and ridges, And bridges Made of a few uneasy planks, In open ranks, Over rivers of mud whose names alone Would make knock the knees of stoutest man."

The traveller Weld, in 1795, gave testimony that the bridges were so poor that the driver had always to stop and arrange the loose planks ere he dared cross, and he adds:--

"The driver frequently had to call to the pa.s.sengers in the stage to lean out of the carriage first on one side then on the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep roads with which the road abounds. 'Now, gentlemen, to the right,' upon which the pa.s.sengers all stretched their bodies half-way out of the carriage to balance on that side. 'Now, gentlemen, to the left,' and so on."

The coach in which this pleasure trip was taken is shown in the ill.u.s.tration ent.i.tled "American Stage-wagon." It is copied from a first edition of _Weld's Travels_.

Ann Warder, in her journey from Philadelphia to New York in 1759, notes two overturned and abandoned stage-wagons at Perth Amboy; and many other travellers give similar testimony. In 1796 the trip from Philadelphia to Baltimore took five days.

The growth in stage-coaches and travel came with the turnpike at the beginning of this century. In transportation and travel, improvement of roadways is ever a.s.sociated with improvement of vehicles. The first extensive turnpike was the one between Philadelphia and Lancaster, built in 1792. The growth and the cost of these roads may be briefly mentioned by quoting a statement from the annual message of the governor of Pennsylvania in 1838, that that commonwealth then had two thousand five hundred miles of turnpikes which had cost $37,000,000.

Many of these turnpikes were beautiful and splendid roads; for instance, the "Mohawk and Hudson Turnpike," which ran in a straight line from Albany to Schenectady, was ornamented and shaded with two rows of the quickly growing and fashionable poplar-trees and thickly punctuated with taverns. On one turnpike there were sixty-five taverns in sixty miles.

The dashing stage-coach accorded well with this fine thoroughfare.

With the splendid turnpikes came the glorious coaching days. In 1827 the Traveller's Register reported eight hundred stage-coaches arriving, and as many leaving Boston each week. The forty-mile road from Boston to Providence sometimes saw twenty coaches going each way. The editor of the _Providence Gazette_ wrote: "We were rattled from Boston to Providence in four hours and fifty minutes--if any one wants to go faster he may go to Kentucky and charter a streak of lightning." There were four rival lines on the c.u.mberland road,--the National, Good Intent, Pioneer, and June Bug. Some spirited races the old stage-road witnessed between the rival lines. The distance from Wheeling to c.u.mberland, one hundred and thirty-two miles, was regularly accomplished in twenty-four hours. No heavy luggage was carried and but nine pa.s.sengers; fourteen coaches rolled off together--one was a mail-coach with a horn. Relays were every ten miles; teams were changed before the coach ceased rocking; one driver boasted of changing and harnessing his four horses in four minutes. Lady travellers were quickly thrust in the open door and their bandboxes after them. Scant time was there for refreshment, save by uncorking of bottles. The keen test and acute rivalry between drivers came in the delivery of the President's Message.

Dan Gordon carried the message thirty-two miles in two hours and thirty minutes, changing horses three times. Bill n.o.ble carried the message from Wheeling to Hagerstown, a hundred and eighty-five miles, in fifteen and a half hours.

In 1818 the Eastern Stage Company was chartered in the state of New Hampshire. The route was this: a stage started from Portsmouth at 9 A.M.; pa.s.sengers dined at Topsfield; thence through Danvers and Salem; back the following day, dining at Newburyport. The capital stock was four hundred and twenty-five shares at a hundred dollars par. In 1834 the stock was worth two hundred dollars a share. The company owned several hundred horses. It was on a coach of this line that Henry Clay rode from Pleasant Street, Salem, to Tremont House, Boston, in exactly an hour; and on the route extended to Portland, Daniel Webster was carried at the rate of sixteen English miles an hour from Boston to Portland to sign the Ashburton Treaty.

The middle of the century saw the beginning of the end of coaching in all the states that had been colonies. Further west the old stage-coach had to trundle in order to exist at all: Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, across the plains, and then over the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake. The road from Carson to Plainville gave the crack ride, and the driver wore yellow kid gloves. The coach known as the Concord wagon, drawn by six horses, still makes cheerful the out-of-the-way roads of our Western states, and recalls the life of olden times. The story of spirited and gay life still exists in the Wells Fargo Express. The usefulness of the Concord coach is not limited to the western nor the northern portion of our continent; in South America it flourishes, banishing all rivals.

Ca.n.a.l travel and transportation were proposed at the close of provincial days, and a few short ca.n.a.ls were built. Benjamin Franklin was early awake to their practicability and value. Among the stock-owners of the Dismal Swamp Ca.n.a.l was George Washington, and he was equally interested in the Potomac Ca.n.a.l.

The Erie Ca.n.a.l, first proposed to the New York legislature in 1768, was completed in 1825. There was considerable pa.s.senger travel on this ca.n.a.l at "a cent and a half a mile, a mile and a half an hour." Horace Greeley has given an excellent picture of this leisurely travel; it was a.s.serted by some that stage-coaches were doomed by the ca.n.a.l-boat, but they continued to exist till they encountered a more formidable rival.