Though the stones as “big as one’s horse” must be allowed for as the pardonable exaggeration of a traveller’s tale, it is true that the method of road mending previous to Macadam was nothing more than setting down enormous stones to be crushed in by passing wheels, but as they were not set close, the wheels went bumping into the mud between, and the force of the jolt instead of setting the stones pushed them out of position ever worse and worse. “Where they are mending, as they call it, you travel over a bed of loose stones none of less size than an octavo volume, and where not mended ‘tis like a staircase.” As for the means of conveyance over these vile highways, before the making of turnpike-roads waggons had been the usual method, and flying coaches, as they were at first called, were considered a great improvement; however, coach fares were high, and even after the introduction of coaches many people who were unable to afford them still travelled by the slow-going waggon. This mode of proceeding must have been inexpressibly wearisome; here is an account of a journey made by such means from London to Greenwich— “We were twenty-four passengers within side and nine without. It was my lot to sit in the middle with a very lusty woman on one side, and a very thin man on the other. ‘Open the window,’ said the former and she had a child on her lap whose hands were all besmeared with gingerbread. ‘It can’t be opened,’ said a little prim coxcomb, ‘or I shall get cold.’ ‘But I say it shall, sir,’ said a butcher who sat opposite to him, and the butcher opened it; but as he stood, or rather bent forward to do this, the caravan came into a rut and the butcher’s head, by the suddenness of the jolt, came into contact with that of the woman who sat next to me, and made her nose bleed. He begged her pardon and she gave him a slap on the face that sounded through the whole caravan. Two sailors that were seated near the helm of this machine, ordered the driver to cast anchor at the next public house. He did so and the woman next to me called for a pint of ale which she offered to me, after she had emptied about a pint of it, observing, ‘that as how she loved ale mightily.’ I could not drink, at which she took offence.... A violent dispute now arose between two stout-looking men, the one a recruiting sergeant, the other a gentleman’s coachman, about the Rights of Man.... Another dispute afterwards was about politics, which was carried on with such warmth as to draw the attention of the company to the head of the caravan, where the combatants sat wedged together like two pounds of Epping butter, whilst a child incessantly roared at the opposite side, and the mother abused the two politicians for frightening her babe. The heat was now so great that all the windows were opened, and with the fresh air entered clouds of dust, for the body of the machine is but a few inches from the surface of the road.”