orse presages great changes in New England.
Ferries will be established; tolls levied, bridges thrown across the
streams which now the horses swim, or cross by having their front feet
in one canoe ferry and their hind feet in another--the canoes being
lashed together. As yet we see no vehicle of any kind, except an
occasional sedan chair. (The first one of these of which we have
knowledge was presented to Governor Winthrop as a portion of a capture
from a Spanish galleon.) However, these are not common. In 1631 Governor
Endicott of Salem wrote that he could not get to Boston to visit
Governor Winthrop as he was not well enough to wade the streams. The
next year we read of Governor Winthrop surmounting the difficulty when
he goes to visit Governor Bradford, by being carried on the backs of
Indians across the fords. (It took him two days to make the journey.)

It is not strange that we see no wheeled vehicles. In 1672 there were
only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain, and they were the
occasion of a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel!
At this time Boston had one private coach. Although one swallow may not
make a summer, one stage-coach marks the beginning of a new era. The age
of walking and horseback riding approaches its end; gates and bars
disappear, the crooked farm lanes are gradually straightened; and in
come a motley procession of chaises, sulkies, and two-wheeled
carts--two-wheeled carts, not four. There are sleds and sleighs for
winter, but the four-wheeled wagon was little used in New England until
the turn of the century. And then they were emphatically objected to
because of the wear and tear on the roads! In 1669 Boston enacted that
all carts "within y^e necke of Boston shall be and goe without shod
wheels." This provision is entirely comprehensible, when we remember
that there was no idea of systematic road repair. No tax was imposed for
keeping the roads in order, and at certain seasons of the year every
able-bodied man labored on the highways, bringing his own oxen, cart,
and tools.

But as the Old Coast Road, which was made a public highway in 1639,
becomes a genuine turnpike--so chartered in 1803--the good old coaching
days are ushered in with the sound of a horn, and handsome equipages
with well-groomed, well-harnessed horses ply swiftly back and forth.
Genial inns, with swinging pictorial signboards (for many a traveler
cannot read), spring up along the way, and the