bmerged in liquid mud, and it is
still a mystery to me how the tackle held together. To be jolted off
one's seat so violently as to strike the top of the carriage was not a
unique experience. Nor was the spending of ten hours in making thirty
miles with four horses. In the Yellowstone one of the coaches of our
party settled down in the midst of a slough of despond on the highway,
from which it was finally extricated _backwards_ by the combined
efforts of twelve horses borrowed from the other coaches. Misery makes
strange bedfellows, and the ingredients of a Christmas pudding are not
more thoroughly shaken together or more inextricably mingled than
stage-coach passengers in America are apt to be. The difficulties of
the roads have developed the skill, courage, and readiness of the
stage-coach men to an extraordinary degree, and I have never seen
bolder or more dexterous driving than when California Bill or Colorado
Jack rushed his team of four young horses down the breakneck slopes of
these terrible highways. After one particularly hair-raising descent
the driver condescended to explain that he was afraid to come down
more slowly, lest the hind wheels should skid on the smooth rocky
outcrop in the road and swing the vehicle sideways into the abyss. In
coming out of the Yosemite, owing to some disturbance of the ordinary
traffic arrangements our coach met the incoming stage at a part of the
road so narrow that it seemed absolutely impossible for the two to
pass each other. On the one side was a yawning precipice, on the other
the mountain rose steeply from the roadside. The off-wheels of the
incoming coach were tilted up on the hillside as far as they could be
without an upset. In vain; our hubs still locked. We were then allowed
to dismount. Our coach was backed down for fifty yards or so. Small
heaps of stones were piled opposite the hubs of the stationary coach.
Our driver whipped his horses to a gallop, ran his near-wheels over
these stones so that their hubs were raised _above_ those of the
near-wheels of the other coach, and successfully made the dare-devil
passage, in which he had not more than a couple of inches' margin to
save him from precipitation into eternity. I hardly knew which to
admire most--the ingenuity which thus made good in altitude what it
lacked in latitude, or the phlegm with which the occupants of the
other coach retained their seats throughout the entire episode.

The Englishman arriving in Bost