But although the road from Cornwall to Prescot is certainly inferior to the Bath and Brighton roads in England, we met, in the course of the journey, with no other accidents than such as might have happened on the best-made. Being light in luggage, one of the extras as they call them—that is a stage-coach hired for ourselves, easily took us all; and we were driven along in it as joyously as if we had been witches riding on broomsticks in a hurricane.

The coaches in this country merit, however, a more particular description. They are vast curved-headed caravans, loosely suspended by enormous leathern straps, and seem to have been invented about the same era as the French jackboots. Capable of containing at least nine full-grown persons, Virgil's white sow with young was not such a miracle as they are when crammed with children. They rattle along like a visible and embodied peal of thunder, involved with all sorts of violence in sound and motion. The boldest bang-up coachman from the White-horse Cellar or the Angel at Islington, would stand a statue of astonishment at the sight of their oscillations and balancing, with

“—Each particular hair on end Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”

Indeed no creature, lion, tiger, or bull-dog, equals in courage a Yankey driver; and the coachmen in Canada are all from New England. They flourish their carriages along through the dubs and pools and over the dry roads, like the directing genii of water-spouts and whirlwinds, themselves all the time as sedate as the stumps and roots amidst which they navigate.