How the World Travels

								

took a week--only a week, people said then--to go from London to
York, and the journey to Manchester could actually be made in four
days.
In Hogarth's pictures we can see what an early stage coach was
like, with its large, clumsy wheels, high roof, and an enormous
basket at the back in which baggage was carried and where
passengers who wished to travel cheaply could sit. Later on
this basket developed into an extra back seat, and in a picture
painted in 1834 there is a coach with no less than three separate
compartments, besides having seats on the roof.
In 1784 sixteen coaches left London every day, and it was one of
the sights of the City to see them start from the General Post
Office on their journeys. Each vehicle had an armed guard, for
those were the days of highwaymen, and it was no uncommon thing for
travellers to be stopped and robbed by gentlemen of the road.
Dick Turpin was one of these thieves, and for a long time he
terrorised Epping Forest and the outskirts of London, and another
famous--or infamous--robber was the young Frenchman Claud Duval,
about whom many romantic tales are told. On one occasion he
returned the jewels that he had stolen from a beautiful lady, on
condition that she would descend from her carriage and dance a
measure with him on the open road.
It is difficult now to realise what our highways were like a
hundred years ago and more, when coaching was at its height. Then
the great roads were crowded with traffic, post-chaises, stage
wagons, and pack-horses. Now it is sad to see the same roads
narrowed to half their former width by broad borders of grass that
have been allowed to grow.
In those days there were many private travelling carriages besides
the public coaches. A most interesting one is now in London at
Madame Tussaud's. This is the wonderful coach which belonged to
Napoleon Buonaparte. In it the great emperor rode back from Russia
after the burning of Moscow, and later on from Cannes to Paris on
his triumphal progress through France in 1815.
It is said that Napoleon himself designed the fittings of this
carriage, for it contained everything necessary for a long journey,
and was intended to serve the purpose of a bedroom, a dining-room,
and a kitchen. The coach was captured by a German officer after
the Battle of Waterloo, the emperor making his escape on horseback;
and having been purchased by a man named Bullock, it was exhibited
through the whole of the United Kingdom.
Gradually, as time went on, railways superseded the picturesque
old coaches. They continued to be used, however, in less civilised
countries, and can still be seen in the wild forest districts of
Australia, New Zealand, and America.
In the early pioneer days of the United States these coaches, with
their loads of passengers and mails, sometimes encountered bands
of Red Indians in their journeys across the prairies, and there
are stories of terrible disasters and narrow escapes when the