But At Length I Accommodated Matters, By Telling The Officer That
He Should Have A Place In It Gratis, And His Servant Might Ride
A-Horse-Back.
He accepted the offer without hesitation; but, in the mean
time, we set out in the coach before them, and having proceeded
about a couple of miles, the road was so deep from a heavy rain,
and the beasts were so fatigued, that they could not proceed.
The
postilions scourging the poor animals with great barbarity, they
made an effort, and pulled the coach to the brink of a precipice,
or rather a kind of hollow-way, which might be about seven or
eight feet lower than the road. Here my wife and I leaped out,
and stood under the rain up to the ancles in mud; while the
postilions still exercising their whips, one of the fore-horses
fairly tumbled down the descent, arid hung by the neck, so that
he was almost strangled before he could be disengaged from the
traces, by the assistance of some foot travellers that happened
to pass. While we remained in this dilemma, the chaise, with the
officer and my servant, coming up, we exchanged places; my wife
and I proceeded in the chaise, and left them with Miss C - and Mr.
R - , to follow in the coach. The road from hence to Florence is
nothing but a succession of steep mountains, paved and conducted
in such a manner, that one would imagine the design had been to
render it impracticable by any sort of wheel-carriage.
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Words from 124460 to 124720
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