Rollo in Geneva. Abbott Jacob
rang again. The horses sprang forward and trotted off at great speed out of the place, and wheeled round the corner to the quay; and while they were going, the conductor came climbing up the side of the coach to his place.
"The conductor never gets into his place before the diligence starts. He waits till the horses set out, and then jumps on to the step, and so climbs up the side while the horses are going.
"A diligence is a monstrous great machine; and when it sets out on a journey in a city, the rumbling of the wheels on the pavement, and the clattering of the horses' feet, and the continual cracking of the coachman's whip, and the echoes of all these sounds on the walls of the buildings, make a wonderful noise and din, and every body, when the diligence is coming, hurries to get out of the way. Indeed, I believe the coachman likes to make all the noise he can; for he has sleigh bells on the harness, and, besides cracking his whip, he keeps continually shouting out to the horses and the teamsters on the road before him; and whenever he is passing through a town or a village he does all this more than any where else, because, as I suppose, there are more people there to hear him.
"Presently, after driving along the quay a little way, we turned off to one of the great stone bridges that lead across the Rhone. We went over this bridge in splendid style. I could see far up and down the river, and trains of wagons and multitudes of people going and coming on the other bridges. The water in the river was running very swift. There were some boats along the shore, but I don't see how the people could dare to venture out in them in such a current.
"As soon as we had got over the bridge, we struck into a beautiful road across the country, and the postilion cracked on faster and harder than ever. We had five horses, three abreast before, and two behind. They went upon the gallop, and the postilion kept cracking his whip about them and over their ears all the time. I thought for a while that he was whipping them; but when I leaned forward, so that I could look down and see, I found that he did not touch them with his whip at all, but only cracked the snapper about them, and shouted at them in French, to make them go. The road was as hard and smooth as a floor, and it was almost as white as a floor of marble.
"The country was very beautiful as long as we could see. There were no fences, but there were beautiful fields on each side of the road, divided into squares, like the beds of a garden, with all sorts of things growing in them.
"Every now and then we came to a village. These villages were the queerest looking places that you can imagine. They were formed of rows of stone houses, close to each other and close to the street. They were so close to the street, and the street was usually so narrow, that there was scarcely room sometimes to pass through. I could almost shake hands with the people looking out the second story windows. I cannot imagine why they should leave the passage so narrow between the houses on such a great road. If there were any people in the street of the village when we went through, they had to back up against the wall when we passed them, to prevent being knocked down.
"When we were going through any of these villages, the postilion drove faster than ever. He would crack his whip, and cheer on his horses, and make noise and uproar enough to frighten half the town.
"We went on in this way till it began to grow dark. The postilion handed the lanterns up to the conductor, and he lighted them with some matches that he carried in his pocket. The lanterns had reflectors in the back of them, and were very bright. When the postilion put them back in their places on the front of the coach, the light shone down on the road before us, so that the way where the horses were going was as bright as day.
GOING THROUGH THE VILLAGE.
"After a time the moon rose, and that made it pretty bright every where. Still I could not see very far, and as the people around me were talking, I listened to what they were saying. The conductor was telling stories about diligences that had been robbed. He said that once, when he was travelling somewhere, the diligence was attacked by robbers, and he was shot by one of them. He was shot in the neck; and he had to keep in his bed six months before he got well. I listened as well as I could, but the diligence made
such a noise that I could not understand all he said, and I did not hear where it was that this happened. I suppose it was probably in Italy, for I have heard that there were a great many robbers there.
"After a while I began to feel sleepy. I don't remember going to sleep, for the first thing I knew after I began to feel sleepy was that I was waking up. We were stopping to change horses. We stopped to change horses very often—oftener than once an hour. When we changed horses we always changed the postilion too. A new postilion always came with every new team. It was only the conductor that we did not change. He went with us all the way.
"We changed horses usually in a village; and it was very curious to see what queer-looking hostlers and stable boys came out with the new teams. Generally the hostlers were all ready, waiting for the diligence to come; but sometimes they would be all asleep, and the conductor and the postilion would make a great shouting and uproar in waking them up.
"When the new team was harnessed in, the new postilion would climb up to his seat, with the reins in his hands, and, without waiting a moment, he would start the horses on at full speed, leaving the poor conductor to get on the best way he could. By the time the horses began to go on the gallop, the conductor would come climbing up the side of the coach into his place.
"It was curious to see how different the different teams were in regard to the number of horses. Sometimes we had four horses, sometimes five, and once we had seven. For a long time I could not tell what the reason was for such a difference. But at last I found out. It was because some of the stages were pretty nearly level, and others were almost all up hill. Of course, where there was a great deal of up hill they required more horses. At the time when they put on seven horses I knew that we had come to a place where it was almost all up hill; and it was. The road went winding around through a region of hills and valleys, but ascending all the time. Still the road was so hard and smooth, and the horses were so full of life, that we went on the full trot the whole way. Four horses could not have done this, though, with such a heavy load. It took seven.
"In almost all the villages we came to we saw long lines of wagons by the road side. They were very curious wagons indeed. They were small. Each one was to be drawn by one horse. There was no body to them, but only two long poles going from the forward axletree to the back axletree; and the load was packed on these poles, and covered with canvas. It looked just like a big bundle tied up in a cloth. These were wagons that had stopped for the night. Afterwards, when the morning came, we overtook a great many trains of these wagons, on the road to Geneva. They were loaded with merchandise going from France into Switzerland. There was only one driver to the whole train. He went along with the front wagon, and all the rest followed on in a line. The horses were trained to follow in this way. Thus one man could take charge of a train of six or eight wagons.
"There was one very curious thing in the arrangement, and that was, that the last horse in the train had a bell on his neck, something like a cow bell. This was to prevent the driver from having to look round continually to see whether the rest of the horses were coming or not. As long as he could hear the bell on the last one's neck he knew they were all coming; for none of the middle ones could stop without stopping all behind them.
"I suppose that sometimes some of the horses in the train would stop; then the driver would observe that the bell ceased to ring, and he would stop his own wagon, and go back to see what was the matter. If he found that any of them stopped to eat grass by the way, or because they were lazy, he would give them a whipping, and start them on, and that would teach them to keep marching on the next time.
"I know what I would do if I were the last horse. Whenever I wanted to stop and rest I would keep shaking my head all the time, and that would make the driver think that I was coming along.
"One time, when we were stopping to change horses, I heard some one below me calling to me,
"'Rollo!'
"I believe I was asleep at that time, and dreaming about something, though I don't remember what it was. I started up and reached out as far as I could over the boot, and looked down. I found it was my mother calling to me.
"'Rollo,'