d lift the clumsy wheels out of deep ruts, the
progress was much slower. The loss of life from accidents, in proportion
to the number of travellers, was much greater than it has ever been on
the railway. Broad rivers like the Connecticut and Housatonic had no
bridges. To drive across them in winter, when they were solidly frozen
over, was easy; and in pleasant summer weather to cross in a row-boat
was not a dangerous undertaking. But squalls at some seasons and
floating ice at others were things to be feared. More than one instance
is recorded where boats were crushed and passengers drowned, or saved
only by scrambling upon ice-floes. After a week or ten days of
discomfort and danger the jolted and jaded traveller reached New York.
Such was a journey in the most highly civilized part of the United
States. The case was still worse in the South, and it was not so very
much better in England and France. In one respect the traveller in the
United States fared better than the traveller in Europe: the danger from
highwaymen was but slight.

[Sidenote: Local jealousies and antipathies, an inheritance from
primeval savagery.]

Such being the difficulty of travelling, people never made long journeys
save for very important reasons. Except in the case of the soldiers,
most people lived and died without ever having seen any state but their
own. And as the mails were irregular and uncertain, and the rates of
postage very high, people heard from one another but seldom. Commercial
dealings between the different states were inconsiderable. The
occupation of the people was chiefly agriculture. Cities were few and
small, and each little district for the most part supported itself.
Under such circumstances the different parts of the country knew very
little about each other, and local prejudices were intense. It was not
simply free Massachusetts and slave-holding South Carolina, or English
Connecticut and Dutch New York, that misunderstood and ridiculed each
the other; but even between such neighbouring states as Connecticut and
Massachusetts, both of them thoroughly English and Puritan, and in all
their social conditions almost exactly alike, it used often to be said
that there was no love lost. These unspeakably stupid and contemptible
local antipathies are inherited by civilized men from that far-off time
when the clan system prevailed over the face of the earth, and the hand
of every clan was raised against its neighbours. They are