ridges,
And bridges
Made of a few uneasy planks,
In open ranks,
Over rivers of mud whose names alone
Would make knock the knees of stoutest man."

The traveller Weld, in 1795, gave testimony that the bridges were so
poor that the driver had always to stop and arrange the loose planks ere
he dared cross, and he adds:--

"The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage
to lean out of the carriage first on one side then on the other, to
prevent it from oversetting in the deep roads with which the road
abounds. 'Now, gentlemen, to the right,' upon which the passengers
all stretched their bodies half-way out of the carriage to balance
on that side. 'Now, gentlemen, to the left,' and so on."

The coach in which this pleasure trip was taken is shown in the
illustration entitled "American Stage-wagon." It is copied from a first
edition of _Weld's Travels_.

Ann Warder, in her journey from Philadelphia to New York in 1759, notes
two overturned and abandoned stage-wagons at Perth Amboy; and many other
travellers give similar testimony. In 1796 the trip from Philadelphia to
Baltimore took five days.

The growth in stage-coaches and travel came with the turnpike at the
beginning of this century. In transportation and travel, improvement of
roadways is ever associated with improvement of vehicles. The first
extensive turnpike was the one between Philadelphia and Lancaster, built
in 1792. The growth and the cost of these roads may be briefly mentioned
by quoting a statement from the annual message of the governor of
Pennsylvania in 1838, that that commonwealth then had two thousand five
hundred miles of turnpikes which had cost $37,000,000.

Many of these turnpikes were beautiful and splendid roads; for instance,
the "Mohawk and Hudson Turnpike," which ran in a straight line from
Albany to Schenectady, was ornamented and shaded with two rows of the
quickly growing and fashionable poplar-trees and thickly punctuated with
taverns. On one turnpike there were sixty-five taverns in sixty miles.
The dashing stage-coach accorded well with this fine thoroughfare.

With the splendid turnpikes came the glorious coaching days. In 1827 the
Traveller's Register reported eight hundred stage-coaches arriving, and
as many leaving Boston each week. The forty-mile road from Boston to
Providence sometimes saw twenty coaches going each way. The editor of
the _Pr