CARRIAGE HORSES AND COBS. 179 



pleasure and for show rather than for long and ne- 

 cessary journeys. When Horace Walpole paid an 

 electioneering visit to the country in 17G1, after an 

 absence of fifteen years or so, he found that a great 

 improvement had taken place, and he explained it 

 as follows : — 



" To do the folks justice, they are sensible and rea- 

 sonable and civilized ; their very language is polished 

 since I lived aruOng them. I attribute this to their 

 more frequent intercourse with the world and the 

 capital by the help of good roads and post chaises, 

 which, if they have abridged the King's dominions, 

 have at least tamed his subjects." 



The primitive carriage horse was a pony, unac- 

 quainted with grooming, ignorant even of the taste of 

 oats ; and the vehicle that he drew required no roads, 

 a path through the forest sufficing for its progress. 

 And yet, oddly enough, this ancient vehicle is still em- 

 ployed in this country. Within a few months of the 

 present writing, I have seen it conveying a squaw and 

 a papoose around the circus ring; and the red men 

 have constructed it in that identical form for centu- 

 ries, and still use it in some of the Western reserva- 

 tions. This woodland carriage is made, as doubtless 

 the reader knows, by taking a couple of long poles, 

 and affixing them to the horse's neck in such a man- 

 ner that they drag on the ground behind his heels, 

 the load being fastened on the end of the poles. 



Xext to these tepee poles, as the Indians call them, 

 or trainaux in the French Canadian tongue, came, in 

 this country, the sledge of the Appalachians. There 

 are old men still living in the mountains of Kentucky 

 and of Tennessee who have never even seen a wheeled 



