232 



JOHN METCALF, i:o.\l> MAKEK. 



I 'ART III. 



had in several places been hardly passable, and the 

 pitching in the holes and ruts had broken the perches of 

 several carriages. 



The roads through the interior of Kent were no better. 

 When Mr. Rennie, the engineer, was engaged in sur- 

 veying the Weald with a yiew to the cutting of a canal 

 through it in 1802, he found the country almost destitute 

 of practicable roads, although so near to the metropolis 

 on the one hand and to the sea-coast on the other. The 

 interior of the county was then comparatively untrn- 

 versed, except by hands of smugglers, who kept the 

 inhabitants in a state of constant terror. Sydney Smith, 

 in reviewing those times, says that before the age of 

 stone-breaking Macadam and of railways, it took him 

 nine hours in travelling the forty miles between Taun- 

 ton and Bath, during which he suffered between ten and 

 twelve thousand severe contusions, whilst his clothes 

 were rubbed to pieces by being jolted about in the stage- 

 coach basket, which was without springs. " Whatever 

 miseries I suffered," he adds, " there was no post to whisk 

 my complaints for a single penny to the remotest corners 

 of the empire ; and yet, in spite of all these privations, 

 I lived on quietly, and am now ashamed that I was not 

 more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these 

 changes and inventions did not occur two centuries ago." 



In an agricultural report on the county of North- 

 ampton as late as the year 18 13, 1 it is stated that the 

 only way of getting along some of the main lines of road 

 in rainy weather was by swimming! "For instance," 

 says the reporter, "between Daventry and Banbury are 

 several unpleasant, if not dangerous fords on the Char- 

 well, which I crossed in July. I was in water for two 

 hundred yards in one and for a considerable distance in 

 others without knowing the bottom, or the road." In 



1 f General View of the Agriculture 

 of the County of Northampton. 

 Drawn up for the consideration of the 



Board of Agriculture :md Infernal 

 Improvement.' By William Pitt. 

 London, 1813, p. 231. 



