They were painted red and blue, and were covered with a canopy of cloth, so that they looked like the “prairie schooners” which in later days were the emigrant wagons of the western plains. Each wagon had a tool box fastened at the side, and a tar bucket and a water pail hung beneath. The horses were well fed, well matched, and strong, with good harnesses and many jingling bells. The drivers were rough-and-ready men, who snapped their whips in the daytime, told stories in the evening, and slept at night on little mattresses of their own in front of the barroom fire. Hundreds of these wagons were going and coming on the roads in the days when people were not dreaming of freight trains, and no doubt the Conestoga seemed as important then as the chief freight lines now appear to us. In the French and Indian War, when there was great need of wagons to carry Braddock’s stores, Benjamin Franklin was asked to get some of these famous conveyances. He succeeded, for many were to be found in this part of Pennsylvania, and he sent on more than one hundred and fifty of them. He nearly lost his fortune in consequence, for he told the farmers he would see that they were paid if the wagons and horses were not returned. It cost the old patriot twenty thousand pounds, but fortunately the government afterwards paid the money back to him. Not long ago the writer saw one of these wagons, with a boat-shaped box, but without a canopy, in use on a farm near Lancaster. Following the pike westward for twelve miles from Lancaster, the traveler crosses the Susquehanna river at Columbia. The old bridge was destroyed long ago, but the present one, although it looks new, is hardly used in a modern way. It is narrow, with a plank floor, and it serves for railway trains and wagons, as well as for foot passengers. There is no separate place for any of these, so when a train or wagon goes on at either end a telegram is sent to the other end to keep cars and carriages from entering the bridge there. [Illustration: FIG. 24. HAMBRIGHT’S HOTEL, ON THE “PIKE,” THREE MILES WEST OF LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA] Along the “Pike” is an electric road, which carries people more swiftly and doubtless with less dust and jolting than did the old stages. Hambright’s Hotel, shown in the picture above, is on this road, and, with its big chimneys and high, long-handled pump, shows how many of the ancient hotels looked. They seem lonely enough now, but they were gay and busy places then. It is very appropriate that the company which runs all the street cars in and about Lancaster calls itself The Conestoga Traction Company.