WHEN TRAVEL WAS TRYING

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 307, 28 December 1934, Page 9

WHEN TRAVEL WAS TRYING

Roads were called highways or highroads because the Romans ordinarily built tlieii- roads Oft or 7ft above the normal level, which, on appropriate subsoil and undrained, were usually swamps. John Cressett, in 1073, asked: "What advantage is to a man's health to be called out of bed into these coaches, to be hurried by them from place to place, insomuch that, after sitting all day in the summertime stifled with heat, and choked with dust, or in the winter time freezing with cold, a man is often brought to inns by torchlight when it is too late to get supper?" Yet when rail travel began we find MacAdam saying: "The calamity of railways fell upon us," and a well-known magazine said: "When once the novelty has subsided we shall seldom hear of a /gentleman' condescending to assume this hasty mode ,of transit, compatible only with mercantile travellers."