322 DRIVING. 



brought them speedily into subjection. The harness was all 

 made of rope, and the reins also. 



When an English gentleman was going to travel abroad he 

 had to send his carriage to the coach-builder, to be fitted for 

 foreign travel. A small bar, such as you have in a dog-cart, 

 only much stronger and without any steel ends, was attached 

 by a strong leather brace round its centre to the middle of the 

 splinter-bar, half-way between the roller bolts on each side of the 

 pole, the end of the bar having a nick to prevent the rope traces 

 from slipping off. A hook pointing downwards towards the back 

 was placed under the futchels, and from this hook a stout rope 

 was run under the pole, supported by two or three loose straps 

 to the pole ; and at the end of this, one strong light bar about 

 the full length of the splinter-bar, to which the rope traces of 

 the leaders were attached. Collars were seldom used, breast- 

 plates being the almost invariable rule. In most parts of 

 France, and sometimes on the Paris and Calais road, the four 

 horses were driven by one postboy riding the near wheel-horse, 

 with a long whalebone driving whip very smartly bound round 

 with red and green leather, the thong about the same length as 

 the crop, which was probably somewhere near five feet long. 

 A good deal of the driving was done with this whip, and it was 

 marvellous to see the way in which, at a good round trot of seven 

 or eight miles an hour, they would turn out of a narrow street 

 into the porte-cochere of an hotel that was not more than 

 eighteen inches or two feet wider than the breadth of the car- 

 riage they were driving. 



Those who had plenty of money and chose to travel luxuri- 

 ously always engaged a courier. If they wished to travel fast, 

 instead of having only one postilion with four horses, they had 

 two boys, who drove with a wooden-handled short whip, the 

 crop about eighteen inches long, a very long keeper five or six 

 inches long, and a thong of leather and whipcord point, the 

 whole from end of the crop some three feet in length. The 

 horses all belonged to the State, and the boys wore dark blue 

 cloth jackets with short broad tails not reaching to the saddle, 



