All,
Following is a brief excerpt from "From the Atlantic to the Pacific,
Overland: A Series of letters by Demas Barnes" (1866). The passage
below details some of the hardships of overland stage travel and is
useful information with which to be familiar so catching a user's
glimpse of how it was is good to know.
Please post other such travel related info if you have primary documentation
detailing it. Such information is good for a solid impression and if you
have it please post. Thanks.
"Denver, Colorado Territory, June 21, 1865. The conditions of one
man's running stages to make money, while another seeks to ride in
them for pleasure, are not in harmony to produce comfort. Coaches
will be overloaded, it will rain, the dust will drive, the baggage
will be left to the storm, passengers will get sick, a gentleman of
gallantry will hold the baby, children will cry, nature demands
sleep, passengers will get angry, drivers will swear, the sensitive
will shrink, rations will give out, potatoes become worth a gold
dollar each and not to be had at that, the water brackish, the
whiskey abominable, and the dirt almost always unendurable. I have
just finished six days and nights of the this thing: and I am free to
say, until I forget a great many things now very visible to me, I
shall not undertake it again. Stop over nights? No you wouldn't. To
sleep on the sand floor of a one-story sod or adobe hut, without a
chance to wash, with miserable food, uncongenial companionship, loss
of a seat in a coach until one comes empty, etc. won't work. A
through-ticket and fifteen inches of seat, with a fat man on one
side, a poor widow on the other, a baby in your lap, a bandbox over
your head, and three or four more persons immediately in front,
leaning against your knees, makes the picture, as well as your
sleeping place, for the trip…"