The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1865-10-04

England" The coaches" were vast
unwieldly affairs, without springs or
any other contrivance to break the
force of the tremendous shocks they
encountered. It required six, eight,
or ten horses to drag them through
the ruts, gullies, and quagmires then
called roads; and the grandeur of the
novel vehicles did not compensate for
the miseries they inflicted.
BY 1873 great improvements had
been made, and stage-coaches were
established. In that year an ingeni-
GUS author published pamphlet,
bitterly complaining Of TIC Stages
which carried eighteen passengers at
one time, and went q hundred and
sixty miles in the unpatriotically short
time OF four or five days. He was
not without reasons-not he, indeed
and calculated in manner not yet
extinct the vast employment the
eighteen passengers would have given
to grooms, farriers, innkeepers, host
lers, saddlers, farmers, blacksmiths,
&c, if each rode his own horse, in
stead of clubbing with the others for
a common conveyance.
1t is surprising that, as towns seat
cd on navigable rivers enjoyed what
ever commercial prosperity existed,
the plan of opening artificial chan
nels for navigable water had not been
adopted. The first canal made in
England was not earlier than 1855
hundred and ten years ago.
The first railroad where passengers
and freight were drawn by steam was
opened, about thirty-four years ago,
between Liverpool and Manchester.
In beth countries, and between
them. both time and space may now
be said to be comparatively annihi-
lated. Thought is communicated in
simultaneously between distant places.
New York is nearer to London now
than London formerly was to Edin-
burgh or Dublin. The wheels of
steamships strike the waters of almost
every sea. India is already traversed
by railroads of great length, on which
an astonishing amount of traffic and
travel take place. In our own land
East and West, North and South, a
network of railroads is supplying our
mutual wants; increasing intelligence,
and destroying mischievous preju-
dices. In few years the people
dwelling on the shores of the Atlantic
Will be united with their felow-citi-
zens who live on the shores of the
Pacific by bands of iron. China will
then be opened to the new means of
locomotion, and the produce of Asia
Will flow through our continent to us
and to the people OF Europe.
A SNAKE CARRIED IN a LADY's CR1-
NoLNE.-Onc day last week, party
of young folks, male and female, in
the township of Franklin, went to the
huckleberry rock, Il distance of about
eight miles from this neighborhood.
After reaching the rock, the day was
spent i'll the usual way, by picking
berries and wandering over the vast
plain of rock. Evening came, and the
parties returned 80 their homes. One
young lady, after reaching her resi-
dence and performing her customary
work about the house, repaired to her
room to retire for the night, and upon
undressing herself, what did she dis
cover nicely ent~ined around her
waist, between her crinoline and
under-garments, but !. snake, fully
twenty inches in length? AS might
be expected, on making such a disco
very, the lady's feelings can be better
imagined than described She gave
The alarm, when other inmates of the
house came to the room and dispatch
cd his snaheship. 1t turned out to
be Of the spotted adder species, which
is very numerous on the rock. The
query is, how did the reptile manage
to get in that position? The only
way such can be accounted for is
this: Some time during the day the
young woman must have been sitting
down on the rock, and the broad
skirts now worn might possibly have
covered the snake, which, in his en-