[Sidenote: _Six-in-hand through the Mountains._] In the mountains I saw a specimen of American driving that would have astonished our old stagers of the Exeter, or the north road. We were crossing one of the inner ranges, and had been slowly toiling up a long hill, at a rate I suppose of not more than four miles an hour. At last we reached the summit of almost naked rock. The descent on the opposite side was very rapid—seven hundred feet in little more than half a mile. This has been accomplished by a series of zigzags constructed on the face of the hill, in the rudest possible way. The trunks of pine trees were laid longitudinally on what was to be the outside of the road. On the inner side some of the rock was picked down and blasted, and laid on the pine trees; and thus a road was made, as in the case of the bridges I have mentioned, to a very little greater width than that of the coach. The zigzags were short, and consequently the angles were close together. In the middle of the roadway the rock everywhere obtruded to a height sometimes of five or six inches. Any other people would have made the road more carefully, and of more durable materials, in the worst places would have put some kind of parapet to it, and would probably have used mules for the coach, making those sure-footed animals walk down the hill. But an American would consider it insufferable that the safety of the public should be ensured at a loss of a few minutes’ time daily, and that a dollar more than was absolutely necessary should be spent on a road which might in a year or two be superseded by something better, or not wanted at all. And so the way they manage it is to construct a road of the narrow scantling and in the rude fashion I have mentioned, and then to drive down it, with six fine horses, at a rate of not less than eleven miles an hour. As soon as we got to the top of the hill, the horses were put under the whip, and away we went. As we turned the corners at full speed the team appeared to be coming back on the coach; and as we rattled down the inclines the sides of the hill looked like precipices. If one horse had stumbled on the pieces of rock projecting through the road, or got frightened, or become unruly in any way, or if a piece of harness had broken, or the brake had given way, a capsize would have been inevitable, and we should have rolled over to the valley beneath. There was an hotel at the bottom of the hill, and while we sat down to dinner (I think people must sometimes arrive at the hotel without much appetite), another team was put in for another stage, through ravines and along the edges of precipices, which would require American horses and American driving.