412 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



merely used to keep the pad from slipping forward, and a 

 horse with good withers can need no crupper. 



Mr. Hooper, in writing of the exhibits in the 

 carriage department of the Colonial and Indian 

 Exhibition at South Kensington, mentions the Cape 

 carts as having very long poles extending beneath 

 the carts almost to the back, which gave strength and 

 solidity. I did not notice this myself; but with 

 curricles, such as they are, the pole should pass to the 

 back of the cart, as, by doing so, it is rendered far 

 more steady and does not rock or sway about to such 

 an extent as it would otherwise do. 



The young princes, Albert Victor and George of 

 Wales, sent home to the Princess of Wales a jamritzska 

 from Japan, and a Cape cart from the Cape of Good 

 Hope. In this Exhibition were exhibited some South 

 African waggons ; probably the strongest conveyance 

 off a railroad ever made, except it be a traction engine. 

 The wheels are massive and stupendous, as they need 

 to be, seeing that they frequently have to cross the 

 roughest and most rocky country without a vestige of 

 road, frequently not even a cattle-track. They are 

 drawn generally by about sixteen oxen, with three or 

 four drivers urging them forward with enormously 

 long and heavy stock-whips ; but when we have spoken 

 of such conveyances as these, we have gone to the 

 very extreme limit of carriage or coach-building. 

 These waggons are all covered, and form both a means 

 of transit and a habitation. Professor Macoun, a 

 Canadian, says the Cape waggons are unnecessarily 

 heavy, that a light Canadian waggon frequently draws 

 a weight which would astonish the Cape drivers, and 

 advocates attaching one waggon behind the other and 



