THE WAY THAT AMERICANS GO DOWN HILL. 309 
your breast. It seemed to me that I would be, with 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 
flesh, 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 lightning. 
