EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES
wood, instead of springs, and the whole is drawn by seven horses."[1]
The charge for transportation in the diligence often included all the expenses of the traveler on the way.[2]
Besides the diligence, we note as public conveyances the carosse and the coche. "The carosse," says Nugent, "is not unlike our stage-coach, containing room for six passengers, but does not move so quick, and is more embarrassed with goods and baggage. The coche is a large heavy machine, which serves the use both of waggon and coach; it is long-shaped, and provided with windows at the sides, containing generally sixteen passengers, viz., twelve in the body of the coach, sitting two abreast, and two each side at the door of the entrance, a seat being provided there for that purpose. It is furnished with two large conveniencies, one before and another behind, which are made of basket wicker, and are therefore called baskets. Into these baskets they put large quantities of goods, which makes it very heavy in drawing. Sometimes both the baskets are filled with goods, and sometimes the fore one is left empty for passengers, in which the fare is less than in the coach, and they have a covering overhead to preserve them from the injury of the weather. Its motion is but slow, seldom exceeding that of a brisk walk, and as the roads are generally paved with large stone, this kind of vehicle is generally very jumbling and disagreeable.[3] The expence of travelling with the carosse or stage-coach is less than half the sum of riding post, but then you are to make an allowance for being longer upon the road. As for the particular fares of stage-coaches, we shall mention them in each journey; only we are to observe here that the expence of baggage is paid apart, and is generally three sols for every pound above fourteen or fifteen pound weight, which is free. With regard to provisions on the road, your safest way, if you travel post, is to know the price of everything before you order it; but with the stage-coach, your meals are generally regulated at fixed prices, as with us;
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- ↑ Carr, The Stranger in France, 42, 43.
- ↑ The fare by diligence from Paris to Lyons, three hundred and sixty miles, with "maintenance on the road" was in 1763 one hundred livres. The journey took five days, — the last two days, from Chalons to Lyons, being by boat on the Saone. Carr, The Stranger in France, p. 93, gives the price for a place in the diligence from Rouen to Paris (ninety miles), with luggage, as twenty-three livres, eighteen sols. Smollett, Travels, i, 125, 126.
- ↑ Hazlitt found the French stage-coach in his day "a very purgatory of heat, closeness, confinement, and bad smells. Nothing can surpass it but the section of a slave-ship or the Black-hole of Calcutta." Journey, Works, ix, 184.
