"_To the Public_: The stage from New York to Albany was overset on the Highlands, on Friday last, with six passengers on board; one of whom, a gentleman from Vermont, had his collar-bone broken, and the others were more or less injured, and all placed in the utmost jeopardy of their lives and limbs by the outrageous conduct of the driver. In descending a hill half a mile in length, an opposition stage being ahead, the driver put his horses in full speed to pass the forward stage, and in this situation the stage overset with a heavy crash which nearly destroyed it, and placed the wounded passengers in a dreadful dilemma, especially as the driver could not assist them, as it required all his efforts to restrain the frighted horses from dashing down the hill which must have destroyed them all. It was, therefore, with the greatest difficulty, and by repeated efforts, the wounded passengers extricated themselves from the wreck of the stage. Such repeated wanton and wilful acts of drivers to gratify their caprice, ambition, or passions, generally under the stimulus of ardent spirits, calls aloud on the community to expose and punish these shameful aggressions."
It should be added, in truth, that accidents on stage-coaches were seldom with fatal results. Stage-coach travel was more disagreeable than deadly. A stage-coach driver who had driven three hundred days a year for thirty-five years, could boast that there had never been a serious accident while he was driving, and scarcely any injury had been received by any passenger.
Before the days of the turnpike the miserable bridges, especially of the Southern colonies, added to the terrors of travel, though I have not learned of frequent accidents upon them. The poet Moore wrote in the year 1800 of Virginia bridges:--
"Made of a few uneasy planks In open ranks, Over rivers of mud."
Near Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1812, a traveller by coach thus found the bridge:--
"Three large logs were stretched across the creek, called sleepers, and these supported a number of misshapen pieces called rafters, thrown on at random, without being fixed either by nails or pins. They had been disturbed by a freshet, and the driver alighted to adjust them. On entering the bridge, the fore wheels gathered the rafters in a heap which stopped the progress of the coach. This was just as the driver was whipping up the fore horses. They sprang forward, and disengaging themselves with a jerk, by pulling out the staple of the main singletree, they set off at full speed with the singletree rattling at their heels."