"And thus have passed away the nightmare of the farmer, the traveller, the mover and the mail-carrier—a nightmare that prevailed nine months of the year. . . An experience of a trip from Indianapolis to Chicago in March, 1848, by mail stage is pertinent. It took the first twenty-four hours to reach Kirklin, in Boone County; the next twenty-four to Logansport, the next thirty-six to reach South Bend. A rest then of twenty-four hours on account of high water ahead; then thirty-six hours to Chicago—five days of hard travel in mud or on corduroy, or sand. . . In the summer passenger coaches went through, but when wet weather came the mud wagon was used to carry passengers and mail, and when the mud became too deep the mail was piled into crates, canvas-covered, and hauled through. This was done also on the National [Cumberland], the Madison, the Cincinnati, the Lafayette and the Bloomington Roads."
The corvée, or required work on the roads of France, has been given as one of the minor causes of the social unrest which reached its climax in the French Revolu-
