THE MAY THAT AMERICANS GO DOW.V HILL. 309 



your breast. It seemed to nie that I would l»o, witli my 

 companions, if I entered that stage, buried alive ; so 

 preferring to see the coming catastrophe, I mounted the 

 driver's seat with a degree of resolution that would 

 have enabled me to walk under a falling house without 

 winking. 



At the crack of the whip, the horses, impatient of the 

 delay, started with a bound, and ran on a short distance, 

 the boot of the stage pointing to the earth ; a sudden 

 reverse of this position, and an inclination of our bodies 

 forward, told too plainly that we were on the descent. 

 Now commenced a race between gravitation and horse 

 flesTi, and odds would have been safely bet on the former. 

 At one time we swayed to and fro as if in hammocks ; 

 then we would travel a hundred yards sideways, boun- 

 cing, crashing about like mad. 



A quarter way down the mountain — and the horses 

 with reeking-hot sides and distended nostrils laid them- 

 selves down to their work, while the lashing whip cracked 

 and goaded them in the rear, to hasten their speed. 



The driver, with a coolness that never forsook him, 

 guided his vehicle, as much as possible, in zig zag lines 

 across the road. Obstacles, no larger than pebbles, 

 would project the stage into the air as if it had been an 

 Indian-rubber ball, and once as we fell into a rut, we 

 escaped upsetting by a gentle tap from the stump of a 

 cedar tree upon the hub of the wheel, that righted us 

 with the swiftness of liglitning. 



