Ginseng, bears' grease, and snakeroot were at a later date collected and added to the furs and hides. The horses marched in single file on a road scarce two feet wide; the foremost horse was led by the master of the caravan, and each successive horse was tethered to the pack-saddle of the one in front. Other men or boys watched the packs and urged on laggard horses.
I do not know the exact mode of lading these packhorses. An English gentlewoman named Celia Fiennes rode on horseback on a side-saddle over many portions of England in the year 1695. She thus describes the packhorses she saw in Devon and Cornwall:--
"Thus harvest is bringing in, on horse backe, with sort of crookes of wood like yokes on either side; two or three on a side stands up in which they stow ye corne, and so tie it with cords; but they cannot so equally poise it but ye going of ye horse is like to cast it down sometimes on ye one side sometimes on ye other, for they load them from ye neck to ye taile, and pretty high, and are forced to support it with their hands so to a horse they have two people women as well as men."
At a later date this packhorse system became that of common carriers. Five hundred horses at a time, after the Revolution, could be seen winding over the mountains. At Lancaster, Harrisburg, Shippensburg, Bedford, Fort Pitt, and other towns were regular packhorse companies. One public carrier at Harris Ferry in 1772 had over two hundred horses and mules. When the road was widened and wagons were introduced, the packhorse drivers considered it an invasion of their rights and fiercely opposed it.
It is interesting to note that the trail of the Indians and the horse-track of these men skilled only in woodcraft were the ones followed in later years by trained engineers in laying out the turnpikes and railroads.
We are prone to pride ourselves in America on many things which we had no part in producing, on some which are in no way distinctive, and on a few which are not in the highest sense to our credit. Of the Conestoga wagon as a perfect vehicle of transportation and as an important historical factor we can honorably and rightfully be proud. It was a truly American product evolved and multiplied to fit, perfectly, existing conditions. Its day of usefulness is past, few ancient specimens exist; and little remains to remind us of it; the derivative word stogey, meaning hard, enduring, tough, is a legacy. Stogeys--shoes--are tough, coarse, leather footwear; and the stogey cigar was a great, heavy, coarse cigar, originally, it is said, a foot long, made to fit the enduring nerves and appetite of the Conestoga teamsters.