"We travelled all night. The rain and snow descending through the roof, our hats were frozen to our capes, and our cloaks to one another. In the morning we looked like some mountain of ice moving down the Gulf Stream. I thought the machine used at the Dry Dock would have been an excellent appendage to have lifted us bodily into the breakfast room: and this is what the horse-flesh fraternity in New York advertise as their _safe_, _cheap_, _comfortable_, and expeditious winter establishment for Albany."
This latter account is certainly a hard blow to the lover of the "good old times." Of tough fibre and of vast powers of endurance, both mental and physical, must have been our grandfathers who dared to travel overland in winter time. Coaches were often "snowed up" and had to be deserted by the passengers, who were rescued in old pods and pungs, such as are shown on pages 316 and 318, and the journey had to be continued in some of the awkward coach-bodies or "boobies" set on runners like those on pages 362 and 364. Coaches were also overturned or blown off bridges by heavy winds.
Somewhat varied was Captain Hall's experience on the trip from Fredericksburg to Richmond during the following January. The stage-coach was appointed to start at 2 A.M., but at the blank looks of the captain, the stage agent said, "Well, if it is so disagreeable to the ladies, suppose we make it five?" The fare was five dollars. It took seventeen hours to travel the sixty-six miles, and the coach stopped at ten taverns on the way. At each his fellow-passengers all got out and took a mint julep; perhaps he did likewise, which might account for the fact that he pronounced the trip a pleasant one, though it rained; "your feet get wet; your clothes become plastered with mud from the wheel; the trunks drink in half a gallon of water apiece; the gentlemen's boots and coats steamed in the confined air; the horses are draggled and chafed by the traces; the driver got his neckcloth saturated"--and yet, he adds, "the journey was performed pleasantly."
There were days in July, in midsummer, when in spite of the beauties of Nature, the journey by stage-coach on the unwatered roads was not a thing of pleasure. Whether on "inside" or "outside," the traveller could not escape the dust, nor could he escape the fervor of the July sun. And when the eye turned for relief to green pastures and roadsides, there was reflected back to him the heated gold of the sunlight, for the fields flamed with yellow and orange color. Sometimes accidents occurred. One may be described, using the contemporary account of it to show what danger was incurred and through what motive powers. In January, 1823, there was a sharp competition between the two stage lines running between Albany and New York, and apparently the stage-drivers on the rival lines could no more be kept from racing than the old-time steamboat captain. The accident was thus told in a newspaper of the day:--