Note 14 — Chapter I
Reading edition
Moore’s notes are as follows:
On “ridges” (line 3): “What Mr. Weld [an English traveler in America] says of the national necessity of balancing or trimming the stage, in passing over some of the wretched roads in America, is by no means exaggerated. ‘The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage to lean out of the carriage, first on one side, then on the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts, with which the road abounds. “Now, gentlemen, to the right!” upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies half out of the carriage to balance on that side. “Now, gentlemen, to the left!” and so on.’—Weld’s Travels.”
On “bridges” (line 4): “Before the stage can pass one of these bridges the driver is obliged to stop and arrange the loose planks, of which it is composed, in the manner that best suits his ideas of safety, and as the planks are again disturbed by the passing of the coach, the next travelers who arrive have, of course, a new arrangement to make. Mahomet, as Sale tells us, was at some pains to imagine a precarious kind of bridge for the entrance of paradise, in order to enhance the pleasures of arrival. A Virginia bridge, I think, would have answered his purpose completely.”