A large party visiting at a hospitable house, where the artist and his travelling companion were entertained during the heat of the last summer, proposed to accompany him on his visit to the Indian Falls. Excursions on the banks of the Hudson are usually made in boats; but it was necessary to see some points of view from the hills between, and we walked out to the stables to see what could be done for vehicles and cattle. A farm waggon, with its tail up in the air, built after an old Dutch fashion, which still prevails in New York,—a sort of loosely jointed, long, lumbering vehicle, which was meant to go over any rock smaller than a beer-barrel without upsetting—was the only “consarn,” as the “help” called it, which would hold the party. With straw in the bottom, and straps put across from peg to peg, it would carry eleven, and the driver.
Horses were the next consideration; and here we were rather staggered. A vicious old mare, that kept a wheelwright and a surgeon in constant employ,—and a powerful young colt, half broken,—were the only steeds in stable. However either might be made to go alone, they had never been tried together; and the double waggon harness was the worse for service. The “help” suggested very sensibly that the load would be too heavy to run away with, and that if the mare kicked, or the colt bolted—or, in short, if any thing happened, except backing over a precipice, we had only to sit still and let them do their “darndest.”
We cobbled the harness in its weak spots, shook down the straw for the ladies, nailed up the tail-board, which had lost its rods, got the cattle in, and brought up quietly to the door. The ladies and the champagne were put in, and the colt was led off by the bit, shaking his head, and catching up his hind leg; while the demure old mare drew off tamely and steadily, “never wicked,” as the ploughman said, “till you got her dander up with a tough hill.” The driver had a chain with a list bottom, and, having had some practice in Charing Cross and Fleet Street, fingered his reins and flourished his maple whip through the village, evidently not thinking himself or his driving _de la petite bière_.
The road, which followed the ridges of the superb hills skirting the river opposite West Point, was, in some places, scarce fit even for a bridle-path; and, at every few paces, came a rock, which we believed passable when we had surged over it—not before. The two ill-matched animals drew to a wonder; and the ladies and the champagne had escaped all damage, till, as the enemy of mankind would have it, our ambitious whip saw stretching out before him a fair quarter of a mile of more even road. A slight touch of the whip sent off the colt in a jump, carrying away the off trace with the first spring; the old mare struck into a gallop, and, with the broken trace striking against the colt’s heels, and the whippletree parallel with the pole, away they went as nearly in a tandem as the remaining part of the harness would allow. The tail-board soon flew off, and let out two unsuspecting gentlemen, who had placed their backs and their reliance upon it; and the screams of the ladies added what was wanting to raise the “dander” of the old mare to its most unpleasant climax. The straps gave way, the ladies rolled together in the straw, the driver tossed about on his list-bottomed chain, the champagne corks flew,—and presently, as if we were driven by a battering-ram against a wall, we brought up with a tremendous crash, and stood still. We had come to a sharp turn in the road; and the horses, unable to turn, had leaped a low stone wall, and breaking clear of every thing, left us on one side, while they thrashed the ripe wheat with the whippletrees on the other.