Page:The grand tour in the eighteenth century by Mead, William Edward.djvu/96

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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES

Nugent, whose wide experience may be allowed to count for more than the utterances of the ever-irritable Smollett. Nugent's view, moreover, agrees so closely with Misson's that he has borrowed many of the older writer's very phrases. "But to return to the carriages; the best way … of travelling in this country is with the cambiatura, where it can be had, which is only in the ecclesiastical state, in Tuscany, and in the dutchies of Parma and Modena. The price of the cambiatura is generally at the rate of two julios a horse each post.[1] The greatest conveniency of this way of travelling is that you may stop where you please, and change your horses or calash at every cambiatura, without being obliged to pay for their return, and besides you may take what time you please to satisfy your curiosity. There is room for two people in a calash, which is a much better way of travelling than on horseback, because a person has the advantage of being skreened from the sun and weather, and he is allowed to carry a portmanteau fastened to it of 200 weight. But 'tis proper to look from time to time to the portmanteau, or to make a servant follow the calash on horseback, in order to take care of the baggage; though this trouble may in great measure be prevented by fastening the portmanteau to the calash with an iron chain and a padlock, as is frequently done behind post-chaises in Germany. The tying and untying of the portmanteau at every cambiatura is a necessary piece of trouble that attends this way of travelling; wherefore those who have a long journey to make, and intend not to stop on the road, or only to make a short stay, ought always to agree with one Vetturino for the whole passage. But the best way is to have a calash of your own."[2]

III

Germany

To pass from the well-ordered system of transportation in France to the primitive system of Germany seemed to

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  1. But, as Misson had already observed, "A traveller ought never to defer enquiring about a carriage, till he is just ready to depart; if he would not be forc'd to submit to the most unreasonable terms." New Voyage to Italy, i2, 562.
  2. Grand Tour, iii, 40, 41.