I eat my dinner in a log-house on the road. It was kept by a small planter of the name of Homer. Such a tavern would have raised the thunder and lightning of anger in the page of my brother-travellers in America. But the lamented scarcity of American inns is easily accounted for. In a country where every private house is a temple dedicated to hospitality, and open alike to travellers of every description, ought it to excite surprize that so few good taverns are to be found?1

On the whole, it appears that the inns or taverns of New England were pretty comfortable places, and that some of them were rather distinguished. Tourists are proverbially hard to please, and it is natural that we should hear more of the unpleasant than of the agreeable incidents that accompanied travelling in a new country. But the good repute of our hotels nowadays is merely a continuation of the character which they bore in old times. The administrative capacity for which the Yankee is famous has applied itself successfully to the complicated business of innholding. Many noted landlords in other parts of the country have been New England men. Good cheer has become a cherished American institution. We can hardly venture to assert that its home is New England; but one would find it hard to make out a better case for any other part of the continent.

1 Travels in the United States of America, London, 1803, p. 341.

F

ON THE ROAD

ROM the earliest times in New England to the latter

half of the eighteenth century travellers usually rode

on horseback, and for short distances this continued to be the custom until long after stage lines had become numerous and well-managed. Felt, in his History of Ipswich, published in 1834, tells us that "about thirty-five years ago, horse-wagons began to be employed. Gradually increasing, they have almost altogether superseded riding on horse-back among our farmers. They are used to carry articles to market, which were formerly borne to town in wallets and panniers, thrown across a horse. They have prevented the method of going in a cart, as often practised before they were invented, by social parties, when wishing to make a visit of several miles."1 Travelling on horseback is now so completely obsolete in New England, — though riding for pleasure is happily on the increase, that certain directions for the management of horses on a journey, given in the Almanac for 1794, have merely an historical significance. No one would think of uttering such precepts to an audience of New England farmers nowadays. They would have little more to do with the needs of the community than a treatise on the care of camels in desert traffic. Yet when they were written they were quite to the point.

The English traveller Bennett, in 1740, thus describes the usual methods of travel in New England:

1 Joseph B. Felt, History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton, Cambridge, 1834, p. 32.

There are several families in Boston that keep a coach, and pair of horses, and some few drive with four horses; but for chaises and saddle-horses, considering the bulk of the place, they outdo London. They have some nimble, lively horses for the coach, but not any of that beautiful large black breed so common in London. Their saddle-horses all pace naturally, and are generally counted sure-footed; but they are not kept in that fine order as in England. The common draught-horses used in carts about the town are very small and poor, and seldom have their fill of anything but labor. The country carts and wagons are generally drawn by oxen, from two to six, according to the distance of place, or burden they are laden with. When the ladies ride out to take the air, it is generally in a chaise or chair, and then but a single horse; and they have a negro servant to drive them. The gentlemen ride out here as in England, some in chairs, and others on horseback, with their negroes to attend them. They travel in much the same manner on business as for pleasure, and are attended in both by their black equipages. Their roads, though they have no turnpikes, are exceeding good in summer; and it is safe travelling night or day, for they have no highway robbers to interrupt them. It is pleasant riding through the woods; and the country is pleasantly interspersed with farm-houses, cottages, and some few gentlemen's seats, between the towns. But the best of their inns, and houses of entertainment, are very short of the beauty and conveniences of ours in England. They have generally a little rum to drink, and some of them have a sorry sort of Madeira wine. And to eat they have Indian corn roasted, and bread made of Indian meal, and sometimes a fowl or fish dressed after a fashion, but pretty good butter, and very sad sort of cheese; but those that are used to those things think them tolerable.1

In the last two decades of the eighteenth century there was a great improvement in roads and a marked increase

1 Joseph Bennett, Manuscript History of New England, Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., V, 124-5

in the number of stage lines. Wansey, in 1794, remarked that "eight years ago the road from Boston to Newhaven a distance of one hundred and seventy miles, could scarcely maintain two stages and twelve horses; now it maintains twenty stages weekly, with upwards of an hundred horses; so much is travelling encreased in this district."1 Such growth may partly account for the complaints which we often hear about this time as to the quality of the roadside inns. Hotels in the smaller towns found it hard to keep pace with the development of business and the advancing requirements of the public.

In the first year of the nineteenth century the Almanac gives the following

LIST of STAGES that run from BOSTON, and PLACES from which they start.

ALBANY Mail Stage goes through Worcester, Brookfield and Northampton, to Albany; sets off from King's inn, MarketSquare, every Monday and Thursday morning, at 10 o'clock, and arrives at Albany every Thursday and Monday noon.

PROVIDENCE and NEW-YORK southern Mail Stage sets off from Israel Hatch's coffee-house, corner of Exchange-Lane, State-Street, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 8 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at New-York every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday noon: leaves New-York every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and arrives in Boston every Friday, Monday and Wednesday, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

An extra stage runs every day to Providence, from the above office.

BOSTON and NEW-YORK Mail Stage sets off from King's inn, Market-Square, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at New York every

1 Journal of an Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 1794, Salisbury, 1796, pp. 71-72.

Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon : leaves New-York every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, at 11 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at Boston every Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

OLD LINE Stage sets off from King's inn, Market-Square, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 10 o'clock in the morning and arrives at New-York every Friday, Monday and Wednesday, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon leaves New-York every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at Boston every Friday, Monday and Wednesday, at I o'clock in the afternoon.

LEOMINSTER Mail Stage passes through Concord and Lancaster, to Leominster; sets off from James Clark's tavern, White Lion, No. 23, Newbury-Street, every Wednesday and Saturday, at 5 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at Leominster the same days leaves Leominster every Monday and Thursday, at 5 o'clock in the morning and arrives in Boston the same days.

PORTSMOUTH Mail Stage passes through Salem, and Newbury-Port; sets off from King's inn, Market-Square, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, at 3 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at Portsmouth the same days, at 6 o'clock in the evening leaves Portsmouth every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 3 o'clock in the morning, and arrives in Boston the same days, at 6 o'clock in the evening.

AMHERST Mail Stage passes through Billerica; sets off from King's inn, Market-Square, every Wednesday morning, at 4 o'clock, and arrives at Amherst at 7 o'clock in the evening, the same day : leaves Amherst every Monday, at 4 o'clock in the morning, and arrives in Boston at 7 o'clock in the evening of the same day.

PROVIDENCE Stage sets off from King's inn every day in the week (Sundays excepted) at 8 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at Providence at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

PLYMOUTH Mail Stage passes through Hingham; sets off from King's inn, Market-Square, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, at 6 o'clock in the morning, and arrives at Plymouth the same days, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon leaves Plymouth