EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES
state for foreign affairs; and those in the provinces, from the governors or chief magistrate of the place. No person, without a particular order, is permitted to ride post without a postilion. None are suffered to pass by a post-house without changing horses, or to go beyond the frontiers in any other carriage but the usual post-waggon. It is an inconvenience to travellers, that, though they come by the post, they are not permitted to proceed in another carriage without staying three days in the place where the stage sets out from."[1]
Sometimes post-horses were lacking, as was once the case when Dr. Moore was in a hilly district. But in this instance their place was taken by "three cart-horses and two oxen, which were relieved in the most mountainous part of the road by buffalos. There is a breed of these animals in this country; they are strong, hardy, and docile, and found preferable to either horses or oxen, for ploughing in a rough and hilly country."[2] In more than one part of the country, particularly in the first third of the eighteenth century, the main dependence, indeed, was upon oxen or buffaloes.[3]
All in all, however, in the second half of the century, as Baretti remarks, "The fact is, that the post-horses are in general very good all over Italy, and that our postillions generally drive at a great rate, trotting their horses on any ascent, and galloping on flat ground rather in a desperado way than otherwise."[4]
Tourists who wished to escape the necessity of looking after themselves or their vehicle commonly arranged matters with a vetturino or his agent. We have numerous accounts of the journeys taken in this way, for until the introduction of railways it was the system ordinarily followed. Accounts dating from the early nineteenth century agree in general with those of a century or two earlier.[5] Bayard Taylor in 1845 went in substantially the same fashion as Misson in the seventeenth century. Says Misson: "We agreed at Rome to be carried in calashes, and to have all our charges borne during the space of eleven days, from
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- ↑ Keysler, Travels, i, 348, 349.
- ↑ View of Society and Manners in Italy, i, 10.
- ↑ So in the region about Capua: "The Buffaloes, which draw most of the Carriages in this part of the Country, were brought in originally by Alphonsus I. They are an ugly, stubborn, and sometimes mischievous Animal, but live upon Straw and are of prodigious Strength and Service." Breval, Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, i, 74. Wright remarks: "The carriages in Lombardy, and indeed throughout all Italy, are for the most part drawn with oxen. … In the kingdom of Naples, and some other parts, they use buffaloes in their carriages."
- ↑ Baretti, Manners and Customs of Italy, p. 280.
- ↑ Already in the sixteenth century "in Italy the vetturino system was in force — that is, a personally conducted tour, the traveller being relieved from all haggling with natives. By this predecessor of the Cook system Moryson travelled from Rome to Naples and back." Hughes, Life of Fynes Moryson, p. ix.
