EASTERN STAGE COACHING. 51 



First Dragoon Guards and of the Seventh Hussars ; the latter of 

 which, a light regiment, brought its horses with it from Eng- 

 land. The Dragoon Guards, which is as heavy a cavalry regi- 

 ment as any in the world, except the Lifeguards and the Royal 

 Horseguards, which are cuirassiers, came dismounted, and were 

 all horsed from Vermont, with scarcely an exception, the Cana- 

 dian horses not having either the size or power necessary to 

 carry such weight. 



I saw this magnificent regiment several times under arras, 

 after the horses had been broken and managed, and certainly 

 never saw a heavy regiment more splendidly mounted in my 

 life. The whole of the artillery was horsed from the same 

 region, and with precisely the stamp of horse which I now see 

 daily before the IN'ew York Express Yans ; and I myself heard 

 a very distinguished officer of rank, who has won still higher 

 distinction in the Crimea say, that the artillery had never, in 

 his knowledge of the service, been better, if so well horsed, as it 

 was while in Canada. 



It may be worth while to add, that the hussars, when ordered 

 home, as is usual, in order to save the expense of transporta- 

 tion, sold their horses ; but the dragoon guards and artillery, 

 unless I have been most wrongly informed, took the greater- 

 part of theirs, and especially the mares, home with them, owing 

 to their superior quality. 



Of the existence of this breed, therefore, there can be no 

 doubt, nor of its excellence. In the old days, while staging was 

 in its perfection in JSTew England, before the railroads had su- 

 perseded coaching, it was the lighter animals of tliis same breed 

 and stamp, which drew the post-coaches, in a style that I have 

 never seen approached, out of New England, in America ; nor 

 do I believe that it ever has been approached elsewhere. For 

 several years it was my fortune, some twelve or thirteen years 

 since, when Salem was the extreme eastern limit of railroad 

 travel, to journey a good deal between Boston and Bangor, in 

 Maine ; and, as I always preferred the box, with the double 

 object of observing the country, and seeing the horses work, 

 having, also, a tolerable knack of getting on with the coach- 

 men, who, by the way, were coachmen, on those roads, in those 

 days, not stable-helpers — each one coaching his own team along, 



