engraved print—­in which he looks more like a Turk than a Christian.  He is dressed in a shawl turban, brickdust-red mantle, and the rest of the costume which he adopted in his Eastern travels.  Our business, however, is with his English adventures, which must, I think, have astonished him as much as anything that he met with in Arabia, even if he acted all the Thousand and One Nights on the spot.  As I have already said, he and his companion (Albrecht Friedrich Woltersdorf, son of the Pastor of St. George’s Church in Berlin), landed at Harwich on Sunday, August 10.  They staid there that night, and on Monday they walked over to Colchester.  There (I presume the next morning) they took the “Land-Kutsche,” and were barely six hours on the road to London.

This statement seems to me to be so at variance with notorious facts, that, but for one or two circumstances, I should have quietly set it down for a mistake; but as I do not feel that I can do this, I should be glad to obtain information which may explain it.  It is no error of words or figures, for the writer expresses very naturally the surprise which he certainly must have felt at the swiftness of the horses, and the goodness of the roads.  He was a man who had seen something of {35} the world, for he had lived five-and-thirty years, thirteen of which had elapsed since he began his travels.  As a foreigner he was under no temptation to exaggerate the superiority of English travelling, especially to an extent incomprehensible by his countrymen; and, in short, I cannot imagine any ground for suspecting mistake or untruth of any kind.[1]

I have never been at Colchester, but I believe it is, and always was, full fifty miles from London.  Ipswich, I believe, is only eighteen miles farther; and yet fifteen years later we find an advertisement (Daily Advertiser, Thursday, Aug. 30, 1764), announcing that London and Ipswich Post Coaches on steel springs (think of that, and think of the astonished Germans careering over the country from Colchester without that mitigation), from London to Ipswich in ten hours with Postillions, set out every morning at seven o’clock, Sundays excepted, from the Black Bull Inn, in Bishopsgate Street.

It is right, however, to add that the Herr Preniger Schultz and his companion appear to have returned to Colchester, on their way back to Germany, at a much more moderate pace.  The particulars do not very exactly appear; but it seems from his journal that on the 16th of September they dined with the Herr Prediger Pittius, minister of the German Church in the Savoy, at twelve o’clock (nach teutscher art, as the writer observes).  They then went to their lodging, settled their accounts, took up their luggage, and proceeded to the inn from which the “Staets-Kutsche” was to start; and on arriving there found some of their friends assembled, who had ordered a meal, of which they partook.  How much time was occupied in all this, or when the coach set out, does not appear; but they travelled the whole night, and until towards noon the next day, before they got to Colchester.  This is rather more intelligible; but as to their up-journey I really am puzzled, and shall be glad of any explanation.