The check system on the railway itself deserves almost unmitigated praise, and only needs to be understood to be appreciated.  On arrival at the station the traveller hands over his impedimenta to the baggage master, who fastens a small metal disk, bearing the destination and a number, to each package, and gives the owner a duplicate check.  The railway company then becomes responsible for the luggage, and holds it until reclaimed by presentation of the duplicate check.  This system avoids on the one hand the chance of loss and trouble in claiming characteristic of the British system, and on the other the waste of time and expense of the Continental system of printed paper tickets.  On arrival at his destination the traveller may hurry to his hotel without a moment’s delay, after handing his check either to the hotel porter or to the so-called transfer agent, who usually passes through the train as it reaches an important station, undertaking the delivery of trunks and giving receipts in exchange for checks.

Besides the city express or transfer companies, the chief duty of which is to convey luggage from the traveller’s residence to the railway station or vice versa, there are also the large general express companies or carriers, which send articles all over the United States.  One of the most characteristic of these is the Adams Express Company, the widely known name of which has originated a popular conundrum with the query, “Why was Eve created?” This company began in 1840 with two men, a boy, and a wheelbarrow; now it employs 8,000 men and 2,000 wagons, and carries parcels over 25,000 miles of railway.  The Wells, Fargo & Company Express operates over 40,000 miles of railway.

Coaching in America is, as a rule, anything but a pleasure.  It is true that the chance of being held up by “road agents” is to-day practically non-existent, and that the spectacle of a crowd of yelling Apaches making a stage-coach the pin-cushion for their arrows is now to be seen nowhere but in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.  But the roads!  No European who has done much driving in the United States can doubt for one moment that the required Man of the Hour is General Wade.[31] Even in the State of New York I have been in a stage that was temporarily checked by a hole two feet deep in the centre of the road, and that had to be emptied and held up while passing another part of the same road.  In Virginia I drove over a road, leading to one of the most frequented resorts of the State, which it is simple truth to state offered worse going than any ordinary ploughed field.  The wheels were often almost entirely submerged in liquid mud, and it is still a mystery to me how the tackle held together.  To be jolted off one’s seat so violently as to strike the top of the carriage was not a unique experience.  Nor was the spending of ten hours in making thirty miles with four horses.  In the Yellowstone one of the coaches of our party settled down in the midst of a slough of despond on