Handspike

“ These bolts and the spokes of the wheels form the points of application for the handspikes, in manœuvering the piece. Manœuvering staples are placed in front of the feet of the braces, for the purpose of using handspikes to raise the rear of the carriage from the tongue of the chassis in running to and from battery. ”

“ The Pace in Driving should be accommodated to the roughness of the Road.
The Turnings should be regulated by the Room. If a Carriage is not wheeled fairly across a channel, the Perch is twisted according to the descent, as the one Wheel falls, in proportion as the other at the opposite angle rises; and frequently by such a wrench the main or Perch Bolt is broken, and every part strained, especially when going [Pg 185] fast. Desire your Coachman to avoid all short sharp Turnings; it is much wiser to go on a few poles further, where another Street will allow plenty of room. ”

“ DRAG CHAIN, SHOE, AND STAFF,
are necessary to every Travelling Carriage: the Chain is to lock the Wheels, and to prevent the going too fast downhill; the Staff is to stop the Carriage, and give rest to the Horses, when ascending a hill; the chain is fixed to a hook about the middle of the perch or crane, with a hook or shoe at the end for the Wheels. The Hook is most handy for use, but the shoe is preferable, as it preserves the Iron of the Wheel from Injury when dragging on hard stony ground. The Chain being covered with Leather prevents it from rattling. ”

“ We thought the latter bad enough at the time, but it was tame when compared with the twists and grades of this far western trail. The long wheel base of our car made it necessary to back up at several of the turns, an operation which excited lively anxiety on part of our lady passenger. It was disquieting, indeed, to see the rear wheel of the car approach within a foot or two of the high bank at the side of the turn with a twenty per cent slope looming ahead, but the car responded so beautifully to the skill of the driver that she gradually became reassured. ”

“ It will easily be understood how, by tightening the free end of the cord, the break is pressed against the wheels. The bent piece of iron shown in fig. 2, by which the bar of the break is kept in its place, may be replaced by a piece of wood, or even by a thong of leather. Every explorer's wagon should be furnished with a break.
A simple break, used in Italy, in some parts of England and probably elsewhere, is shown in fig. 3. A rail is lashed to the body of the cart, both before and behind the wheel, and is made to press against the wheel. ”

“ It is no unusual thing for the track to cross the trail, but in this instance the houses prevented us from seeing the approach of the train. [36]
Meeting another car was an awkward matter as it meant climbing out of the ruts and running with one wheel in the gutter. Sometimes, in trying to avoid a mud hole or something, we ran at such an angle that I only kept my seat by clinging to the steering-wheel, and how Winifred kept hers is a mystery. Straw and sand are sometimes thrown into these mud holes, in a vain endeavour to fill them up. ”

“ A hungry traveler could obtain a substantial meal at an old wagon stand tavern for a “levy,” and two drinks of whisky for a “fippenny bit.” The morning bill of a wagoner with a six-horse team did not exceed one dollar and seventy-five cents, which included grain and hay for the horses, meals for the driver, and all the drinks he saw proper to take.
The National Road is not in a literal sense a turnpike. A turnpike, in the original meaning of the word, is a road upon which pikes were placed to turn travelers thereon through gates, to prevent them from evading the payment of toll. ”

“ The chariots of the Appian Way, drawn by the fastest horses of ancient Italy, formed a dismal cortege in comparison with the sprightly procession of stage coaches on the old American highway. The grandeur of the old mail coach is riveted forever in the memory of the pike boy. To see it ascending a long hill, increasing speed, when nearing the summit, then moving rapidly over the intervening level to the top of the next hill, and dashing down it, a driver like the stately Redding Bunting wielding the whip and handling the reins, revealed a scene that will never be forgotten. ”

“ On the one hand you had coachbuilders and others filling the newspapers and publishing tracts, some very serious, some extraordinarily mathematical, others merely facetious, to prove that the roads could be preserved only by using very broad wheels—some,179 indeed, advocated rollers, which, as we shall see, were actually tried—and on the other hand you had people filling more columns, and very dull columns some of them were, to show that a low broad wheel was the one thing which no really satisfactory vehicle could possibly possess. ”

“ Every man literally "put his shoulder to the wheel." We were compelled often to take hold of the wheels to boost the wagons over the logs or to ease them down steep places. Our force was divided into three groups,—one man to each wagon to drive; four to act as wheelmen; father and the women, on foot or horseback, to drive the stock. God bless the women folks of the Plains! ”

“ This condition of the streets, with the droshkies, a small four-wheel carriage, holding two persons, sitting together behind the driver, or sometimes back to back, with the fore-wheels about twelve inches high, and drawn very rapidly over such a pavement, you may suppose, makes it no easy matter to keep your seat.
The droshky drivers have generally a round hat, and wear long loose dresses almost reaching to their heels, with a band round their waist. ”

“ If carriages had always to move along perfectly smooth roads, such as a tramway of wood, iron, or stone, the use of wheels in overcoming friction would be their sole utility, and the height of the wheels would be of small consequence. But as carriages are drawn along roads with loose stones and uneven surfaces, wheels are further useful in mounting over these obstacles, and it is plain that a high wheel does this more easily than a low one. ”

“ Out in the country, near a dusty turnpike, and a straight, hot railroad track,—but we'll leave the turnpike, which is well scattered with young gentlemen in high shirt-collars, who drink clouds of dust, and drive hired horses to death,—and we'll leave the railroad where the steam engine, like a tired devil, comes blowing and swearing, with red coals in its mouth, and a cloud of brimstone smoke about its head. We'll climb the rails of yonder gray old fence, and get us straightway into the fields ”

“ A handcart is a contrivance propelled along railway metals by pumping at a handle. The handle connects with the wheels by a crank and cogs through a slot in the centre of the platform, and you get five miles an hour out of it, while the crew continues. For sixty miles, in that heat, it was impossible. Yet Hill persisted; the cart was put on the metals, five half-breeds manned the 339 pump handle, three facing the track ahead, two with their backs to it. We three passengers sat on the sides and front of the trolley. ”

“ It is sad to think that nearly all the old drivers, so full of life and hope and promise when pursuing their favorite calling on the nation’s great highway, have answered the summons that awaits the whole human family, and of the vast multitude that witnessed and admired the dashing exploits of the old drivers, but few remain to relate the story. When the old pike was superseded by the railroad, many of the stage drivers went west and continued their calling on stage lines occupying ground in advance of the approaching railway. ”

“ If he followed them long enough, they would mount from knobs to foothills and from foothills to peaks. The metaled turnpikes would dwindle and end in clay roads. These roads would in time give way to rougher trails, rock-strewn and licked by the little, whispering waters that make rivers, and he would travel by creek-bed ways over which wagons, if they go at all, must strain their axles and where men ride mules with their luggage in saddle-bags. ”

“ So with the pick-axe and crow-bar we commenced to clear the most feasible road down by chopping away the shrubbery and brush and removing that and the rocks.
After much of the baggage had been taken down the mountain one way by pack animals, long ropes and guy-ropes were attached to the wagons and the descent with them began by another way. The wagons were lowered for a distance of half a mile or so, men standing as best they could on the mountain side, letting the vehicle down gradually, then holding it till other men could get a fresh footing and lower it still further. ”

“ Every tourist in the Pike's Peak region regards the "Short Line" trip as the very crown of the summer's excursions, or, in the local phrase, one whose sublimity of beauty "bankrupts the English language." These forty-five miles not only condense within their limits the grandeur one might reasonably anticipate during a transcontinental journey of three thousand miles, but as an achievement of mountain engineering, railway experts in both Europe and America have pronounced it the most substantially built and the finest equipped mountain railroad in the world. ”

“ As soon as the rain leaves off and the sun comes out again, he stops the carriage, and dresses himself once more. The harness is made of rope, and, as often as not, it breaks. Then you have to wait while your coachman goes to the nearest shop or house in order to beg a bit of string wherewith to repair the damage. ”

“ Hoopdriver moved the lady's machine out of his way to the door, and then laid hands on the man's machine and wheeled it out of the shed into the yard. The gate stood open and beyond was the pale road and a clump of trees black in the twilight. He stooped and examined the chain with trembling fingers. How was it to be done? Something behind the gate seemed to flutter. The man must be got rid of anyhow. ”

“ I have seen that the resistance to the rolling motion of a carriage on a well-constructed turnpike road may be fairly estimated, cæteris paribus, at about twelve times the resistance on a railroad. It follows, therefore, that whatever be the power of traction used, it will be capable of drawing a load of proportionally less amount on the turnpike road. The surface of a turnpike road is necessarily more uneven than that of a railroad ”

“ It is found in practice, that a waggon used on a turnpike road, and loaded to the amount of eight tons, may be drawn by horses, at the rate of two miles and a half an hour,—the horses working for eight hours daily. Thus the performance of a horse in this way will amount to one ton transported twenty miles a-day. A mail-coach, weighing two tons, and travelling at the rate of ten miles an hour, may be worked on a line of road in both directions by a number of horses equal to the number of miles. ”

“ The perch or coupling-pole should be shifting or movable, as, in the event of the loss of a wheel, an axle, or other accident rendering it necessary to abandon the wagon, a temporary cart may be constructed out of the remaining portion. ”

“ It was used less as a weapon than as a tool for cutting the lanyards of stays and shrouds, the running rigging, etc. etc. The boarding-pike or half-pike was a spike of steel fixed on a staff of [Pg 49] ash. It was a very useful tool for the driving back of boarders. Rows of them, diversified with tomahawks, were sometimes placed along the poop and forecastle, with the hafts scraped clean, and the steels blackened. The other small-arms, such as pistols and cutlasses, were stored in arm-chests in different parts of the ship, and in stands about the masts below decks. ”

“ The want of the same evenness on the surface of a turnpike road, the different states of repair in which different parts of it must necessarily be at any given time, but, above all, the fact that the rolling of the carriages themselves is the means by which the road is for the most part formed, consolidated and rendered smooth, make it necessary that any power of traction used upon it shall be susceptible, as occasion may require, of considerably varied energy. ”

“ To prevent danger in case the brakes should fail to control a train coming down the incline of the roadway, the car-tracks are kept at the same level for the last 600 feet on each approach, which brings them out at about the level of the elevated roads. The cars are to be propelled by means of an endless wire rope, which will run between the rails of each track, over grooved wheels, set upright 221⁄2 feet apart. ”

“ A picturesque part of the old system of locomotion was, of course, the turnpike. The keepers of toll-gates found their principal customers in the numerous coaches and the wagons which travelled up and down the main roads, for the farmers could, and frequently did, by a little mutual contriving, manage a cross-cut by their field-ways on to the main road on the town side of a toll-gate, as in the case of Bassingbourn and the Baldock Road into Royston. ”

“ The pole they draw by is sloped upwards towards the end; which is rais’d considerably above their heads; from whence a chain, or rope, is let down and fasten’d to their horns; which keeps up their heads, and serves to back the carriage. ”

“ Washington, and the one that stood near the eastern base of Big Savage Mountain. At the last mentioned point, the old iron gate posts are still standing, firmly rooted in their original foundations, and plastered all over with advertisements of Frostburg’s business houses, but the old house and the old gates have gone out of sight forever.
It is curious to note how the word turnpike has been perverted from its literal meaning by popular usage. The common idea is that a turnpike is a road made of stone, and that the use of stone is that alone which makes it a turnpike. ”