University of Virginia Library

THE WAY THAT AMERICANS GO DOWN
HILL.

The stage in which we travelled across “the Alleganies,”
was one of the then called “Transit line.” It was, as the
driver termed it, “a rushing affair,” and managed, by a
refined cruelty to dumb beasts, to keep a little ahead of
the “Opposition,” which seemed ever to come clattering
in our rear, like some ill-timed spirit, never destined
exactly to reach, but always to be near us.

The drivers of our different “changes,” all seemed
to be made upon the go-ahead principle, and looked upon
nothing as really disgraceful, but being behind the stage
that so perseveringly pursued us. Unfortunately too,
for our safety, we went in an “extra,” and managed, by
a freak of fortune, to arrive at the different stations,
where drivers and horses were changed, just as the former
had got comfortably to bed; and it was not the least
interesting portion of my thoughts, that every one of
these Jehus made the most solemn protestations, that
he would “upset us over some precipice not less than
three hundred and sixty-five feet high, and knock us into
such a perfect nonenity, that it would save the coroner
the trouble of calling a jury to sit upon our remains.”

It is nine years since, and if the winter of that year
is not set down as “remarkably cold” in the almanacs,
it shows a want of care in those useful annuals.

We say it is nine years since we crossed the Alleganies.
At the particular time to which we allude,
the “oldest inhabitant” of the country (and we met
him on the road side) informed us that he had no recollection
of such a severe season. That we could live
through such a night would have been deemed impossible,
could its perils have been anticipated, before they
were experienced.

The fire in every house we passed smoked like a furnace,
and around its genial warmth were crowded groups

of men, women, and children, who looked as if they
might have been born in the workshop of Vulcan.

The road over which we travelled was macadamized,
and then frozen; it was as hard as nature will permit,
and the tramping of the horses' feet upon it sounded in
the frosty air as if they were rushing across a continuous
bridge.

The inside of the stage-coach is a wonder; it is a
perfect denial to Newton's theory, that two things, or
twenty, cannot occupy the same place at the same time.
The one we travelled in was perfectly full of seats, straw,
buffalo robes, hat-boxes, rifles, flute cases, and small parcels—and
yet nine men—the very nine muses at times
(all the cider along the road was frozen, and we drank
the heart of it), stowed themselves away within its
bowels; but how, we leave to the masters of exhausted
air-pumps and hydraulic presses to imagine.

We all, of course, froze, more or less, but it was in
streaks; the curtains of the stage were fastened down
and made tight, and then, like pigs, we quarrelled ourselves
into the snuggest possible position and place; it
being considered fortunate to be in the centre, as we
then parted with least heat, to satisfy the craving appetite
of Jack Frost, who penetrated every little hole and
nook, and delighted himself in painting fantastic figures
upon the different objects exposed to his influence, out
of our misery and breath.

By one of those extraordinary phenomena exhibited

in the climate of our favored country, we unexpectedly
found ourselves travelling over a road that was covered
with a frozen sleet, for cold as the season was, there was
no snow; the horses' shoes consequently had no corks on
them worth noticing, and the iron-bound wheels, on this
change in the surface of the earth, seemed to have so
little hold upon the road that we almost expected they
would make an effort to leave it, and break our necks as
a reward for their aspirations. On we went, however,
and as night came on, the darkness enveloped us in a
kind of cloud,—the ice-glazed surface of the ground reflecting
upwards a dull, mysterious light.

Our whereabouts never troubled us; all places between
the one we were anxious to reach, and where we
were, made no impression upon us; and perhaps we
would never have known a single particular place, but
for the incident about to be detailed.

I think that all my companions, as well as myself,
were asleep, when I was awaked by that peculiar sawing
motion which a stage body makes upon its springs when
suddenly stopped.

“What's the matter now?” was the general exclamation
of the “insides” to the driver; who was discovered
through the glass window on the ground, beating
his arms around his body with a vehemence that
almost raised him into the air.

“Matter!” he exclaimed, sticking his nose above
a woollen blanket that was tied around his face, which

from the cold and his breath was frosted like a wedding-cake,
“matter enough; here we are on the top of Ball
Mountain, the drag-chain broken, and I am so confoundedly
cold, that I could not tie a knot in a rope if I
had eighteen thousand hands.”

It was a rueful situation truly. I jumped out of the
stage, and contemplated the prospect near and at a distance,
with mixed feelings. So absorbed did I soon become,
that I lost sight of the unpleasant situation in
which we were placed, and regarded only the appearance
of things about me, disconnected with my personal
happiness.

There stood the stage, upon the very apex of the
mountain, the hot steaming breath of my half-smothered
travellers pouring out of its open door in puffs like the
respirations of a mammoth. The driver, poor fellow,
was limping about, more than half frozen,—growling,
swearing, and threatening. The poor horses looked
about twenty years older than when they started, their
heads being whitened with the frost. They stamped
with impatience on the hard-ribbed ice, the polished iron
of their shoes looking as if it would penetrate their flesh
with biting cold.

But such a landscape of beauty—all shrouded in
death, we never saw or conceived of, and one like it is
seldom presented to the eye. Down the mountain could
be traced the broad road in serpentine windings, lessening
in the distance until it appeared no wider than a footpath,

obscured by the ravines and forest-trees through
which it ran; on each side were deep, yawning chasms,
at the bottom of which the hardy pines sprung upward
a hundred and fifty feet, and yet they looked from where
I stood like creeping plants. The very mountain-tops
spread out before me like pyramids. The moon, coming
up from behind the distant horizon, shone upon this vast
prospect, bathing one elevation of light and another in
darkness, or reflecting her silvery rays across the frozen
ground in sparkling gems, as if some eastern princess
scattered diamonds upon a marble floor; then starting
in bold relief the shaggy rock-born hemlock and poison
laurel, it penetrated the deep solitudes, and made “darkness
visible,” where all before had been most deep obscurity.

There too might be seen the heat, driven from the
earth in light fogs by the intense cold, floating upwards
in fantastic forms, and spreading out in thin ether as
it sought more elevated regions.

As far in the distance in every direction as the eye
could reach, were the valleys of Penn, all silent in the
embrace of winter and night, calling up most vividly the
emotions of the beautiful and the sublime.

“How are we to get down this outrageous hill,
driver?” bawled out a speculator in the western lands,
who had amused us, through the day, with nice calculations
of how much he could have saved the government
and himself, had he had the contract of making
the “National Road” over which we were travelling.

The reply of the driver was exceedingly apt and
characteristic.

“There is no difficulty,” said he, “in getting down
the hill, but you well know there are a variety of ways
of doing the same thing; the drag-chain would be of little
use, as the wheel-tire would make a runner of it. I think
you had better all take your places inside, say your
prayers, and let me put off—and if yonder grinning moon
has a wish to see a race between a stage and four horses
down `Ball Mountain,' she'll be gratified, and see sights
that would make a locomotive blush.”

The prospect was rather a doleful one; we had
about ninety chances in a hundred that we would make
a “smash of it,” and we had the same number of chances
of being frozen to death if we did not take the risk of
being “smashed,” for the first tavern we could get to
was at the foot of the mountain. The driver was a
smart fellow, and had some hostage in the world worth
living for, because he was but three days wedded—had
he been married six months we would not have trusted
him.

The vote was taken; and it was decided to “go
ahead.”

If I were to describe an unpleasant situation, I
should say that it was to be in a stage, the door closed
on you, with great probabilities that it will be opened by
your head thrusting itself through the oak panels, with
the axle of the wheel at the same time falling across

your breast. It seemed to me that I would be, with my
companions, if I entered that stage, buried alive; so
preferring to see the coming catastrophe, I mounted the
driver's seat with a degree of resolution that would
have enabled me to walk under a falling house without
winking.

At the crack of the whip, the horses, impatient of the
delay, started with a bound, and ran on a short distance,
the boot of the stage pointing to the earth; a sudden
reverse of this position, and an inclination of our bodies
forward, told too plainly that we were on the descent.
Now commenced a race between gravitation and horse
flesh, and odds would have been safely bet on the former.
At one time we swayed to and fro as if in hammocks;
then we would travel a hundred yards sideways, bouncing,
crashing about like mad.

A quarter way down the mountain—and the horses
with reeking-hot sides and distended nostrils laid themselves
down to their work, while the lashing whip cracked
and goaded them in the rear, to hasten their speed.

The driver, with a coolness that never forsook him,
guided his vehicle, as much as possible, in zig-zag lines
across the road. Obstacles, no larger than pebbles,
would project the stage into the air as if it had been an
Indian-rubber ball, and once as we fell into a rut, we
escaped upsetting by a gentle tap from the stump of a
cedar tree upon the hub of the wheel, that righted us
with the swiftness of lightning.

On we went—the blood starting in my chilled frame
diffusing over me a glowing heat, until I wiped huge
drops of perspiration from my brow, and breathed in the
cold air as if I were smothering. The dull, stunning
sound that now marked our progress, was scarcely relieved
by the clattering hoofs of the horses, and the motion
became perfectly steady, except when a piece of ice
would explode from under the wheels as if burst with
powder.

Almost with the speed of thought we rushed on,
and the critical moment of our safety came. The stumbling
of a horse—the breaking of a strap—a too strongly-drawn
breath, almost, would have, with the speed we
were then making, projected us over the mountain-side
as if shot from a cannon, and hurled us on the frozen
ground and hard rocks beneath.

The driver, with distended eyes, and with an expression
of intellectual excitement, played his part well,
and fortune favored us.

As we made the last turn in the road, the stage for
an instant vibrated between safety and destruction,—
running for several yards upon one side, it displayed two
wheels in the air, whirling with a swiftness that rendered
them almost invisible. With a severe contusion it
righted—the driver shouted—and we were rushing up
an ascent.

For a moment the stage and horses went on, and
it was but for a moment, for the heavy body lately

full of life, settled back upon the traces a dead weight,
dragging the poor animals in one confused heap downwards,
until, shaking violently on its springs, it stood
still.

“A pretty severe tug,” said one of the insiders to
the driver, as he stretched himself, with a yawn.

“Well, I rather think it was,” said Jehu with a
smile of ineffable disdain. “I've driv on this road
fifteen years, but I never was so near — as to-night.
If I was on t'other side of `Ball Mountain,' and my
wife on this (only three days married, recollect), I would
not drive that stage down `Ball Mountain,' as I have
to-night, to keep her from running away with a darkey.”

“Why, you don't think there was any real danger,
do you?” inquired another `insider,' thrusting his
head into the cold air.

“I calculate I do,” said the driver contemptuously.
“If the off fore-leader, when I reached the `devil's
rut,”' he continned, “had fallen, as he intended, your
body would now be as flat as either back-seat cushion
in that stage.”

“Lord, bless us, is it possible!” sighed another
`insider;' “but it is all very well we have escaped, and
we must run a little risk rather than be delayed in our
journey.”

Appreciating more than my fellow-travellers, the
terrible ordeal through which we had just passed, I
have often in my dreams fancied myself on a stagecoach,

just tumbling down the ravines that yawn on the
sides of “Ball Mountain,” and when I have started into
wakefulness, I have speculated on that principle of the
American character that is ever impelling it forward;
but it never forcibly struck me as a national peculiarity,
until I read Howitt's journey down hill among the
sturdy Germans of the Old World.