These vehicles, in which the shafts were really very long, appear to be
the origin of the carriole of Norway, the calesso of Naples, and the
volante of Cuba. In the Museum at South Kensington we have a specimen of
one of these, adorned with much elegant carving. It has no hood. The
seat is very small. Beneath the shafts are two long straps of leather
and a windlass to tighten them; this apparatus was, no doubt, to
regulate the spring of the vehicle to the road travelled over.
There was a small-sized vehicle in use called _Cabriolet_, the body only
a shell, with a hood which would put up and down, composed of three iron
hoopsticks, jointed in the middle to fall upwards; the setting joints
are straight, the covering appears to have been cloth or canvas.
Although these French books appeared about 1770, they describe carriages
that had been a long time in use.
In the meantime the English had been making a great many small chariots.
Dean Swift, in 1770, speaks in his journal of driving down to Hampton
Court and to several gentlemen’s country houses near London in a chariot
and pair of horses, to dine with some great man, and returning after
dinner to town. He mentions that he could not have done the same in the
neighbourhood of Dublin on account of the absence of turnpike roads. He
drove from Windsor to London, twenty-three miles, in two hours and forty
minutes, and from Wycombe to London, twenty-seven miles, in five hours,
and from Windsor to Bucklebury, near Newbury, twenty-six miles, in four
hours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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