completed from Albany to Buffalo, the mails went very slowly to the northwest from New York. The stage line from Buffalo to Cleveland and on west over the terrible Black Swamp road to Detroit was one of the worst in the United States. When lake navigation became closed, communication with northwestern Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and northern Indiana and Illinois was almost cut off. Had the stage route followed that of the buffalo and Indian on the high ground occupied by the Mahoning Indian trail from Pittsburg to Detroit, a far more excellent service might have been at the disposal of the Post Office Department. As it was, stagehorses floundered in the Black Swamp with "mud up to the horses' bridles," where a half dozen mails were often congested, and "six horses were barely sufficient to draw a two-wheeled vehicle fifteen miles in three days."[1]
The old time-tables of the Cumberland Road make an interesting study. One of
