I isi ] 
Were English, and of the best quality ; though we 
travelled post with six, and sometimes eight hor¬ 
ses, over paved and broken roads, sometimes hard 
frozen ; they never absolutely broke, but w^ere con¬ 
stantly giving way, sometimes three or four plates 
would crack, sometimes the iron that supported 
them would break, and at other times they would 
tear and wreck the wood to w^hich they were fast¬ 
ened ; scarce a day passed that we were not com¬ 
pelled to have some repairs made, tho’ we strength¬ 
ened them with cords and thin slips of wood, as 
much as possible. On my return from Naples, 
they underwent a complete repair at Rome ; the 
defective plates were taken out and new ones put 
in; they w^ere covered with wood, and the whole 
carefully corded, a precaution without which no 
iron springs will stand travelling post, a thousand 
or fifteen hundred miles ; particularly as the post¬ 
illions instead of having any mercy upon them, do 
all in their power to break them. When they en¬ 
ter or leave a town or village, the pavement of which 
is generally extremely broken, they snap their whips 
in such a way as to bring all the inhabitants to their 
doors and windows, and put their horses upon full 
gallop, to shew their address in driving. Before I 
got to Bologne, I found new repairs necessary, and 
I began to fear that no repairs would enable me 
to complete my journey through Germany with the 
same carriage. This determined me to try the fol¬ 
lowing experiment. At Bologne they make foot 
balls of asses skin dressed in oil, and containing 
z 
