66 History of Inland Transport 



is the first town in Yorkshire, and there the Country is hard 

 and sound, being Part of Sherwood Forest. 



" Suppose you take the other Northern Road, by St. 

 Albans. . . . After you are pass'd Dunstable, which, as in the 

 other Way is about 30 Miles, you enter the deep Clays, which 

 are so surprisingly soft, that it is perfectly frightful to Travel- 

 lers, and it has been the Wonder of Foreigners, how, considering 

 the great Numbers of Carriages which are continually passing 

 with heavy Loads, those Ways have been made practicable ; 

 indeed the great Number of Horses every Year kill'd by the 

 Excess of Labour in those heavy Ways, has been such a 

 Charge to the Country, that new Building of Causeways, 

 as the Romans did of old, seems to me to be a much easier 

 Expence. From Hockley to Northampton, thence to Har- 

 borough, and Leicester, and thence to the very Bank of Trent 

 these terrible Clays continue ; at Nottingham you are pass'd 

 them, and the Forest of Sherwood yields a hard and pleasant 

 Road for 30 miles together." 



On the road to Coventry, Birmingham and West Chester 

 he had found the clays " for near 80 miles " ; on the road to 

 Worcester " the Clays reach, with some intermissions, even 

 to the Bank of the Severn," and so on with other roads besides. 



Bourn, to whose " Treatise upon Wheel Carriages," pub- 

 lished in 1763, earlier reference has also been made, said, 

 among other things, in support of his scheme of broad-wheeled 

 waggons : 



" So late as thirty or forty years ago the roads of England 

 were in a most deplorable condition ; those that were narrow 

 were narrow indeed, often to that degree that the stocks 

 of the wheels bore hard against the banks on each side, and in 

 many places they were worn below the level of the neighbour- 

 ing surface many feet, nay, yards perpendicular, and a wide- 

 spreading, bushy hedge, intermixed with old half-decayed 

 trees and stubbs, hanging over the traveller's head, inter- 

 cepted the benign influence of the heavens from his path, 

 and the beauties of the circumjacent country from his view, 

 made it look more like the retreat of wild beasts and reptiles 

 than the footsteps of men. 



" In other parts, where the road was wide, it might be and 

 often was too much so, and exhibited a scene of a different 

 aspect. Here the wheel carriage had worn a diversity of tracks 



