Transport

    Horses were used as pack animals before they were either driven or ridden.  The commerce of the Roman Empire depended on pack-trains, as it did throughout Europe in medieval times.  In the 1690s a regular pack-horse goods service ran between Exeter and London, England, but by 1830 only peddlers had pack-horses and used them.
    The first private coaches were expensive, cumbersome and strictly for the aristocracy.  Although they had a luxurious interior the whole structure rested on solid beams and jerked and bounded over the rough roads drawn by four great horses.  The nobility were sometimes conveyed in ornamental pole-slung litters, supported fore and aft by shaft horses.
    The 17th century brought stagecoaches, but since springs were not invented until the beginning of the 18th century, most people still traveled on horseback.
    In Britain until the regular stage and mail coach services of 1786, the mail was carried by horn-blowing, "spatterdashed" (top-booted) horsemen.  They were restricted to a top speed of 7 m.p.h. unlike the relay riders, stationed at approximately 15-mile intervals, of the short-lived (18 months beginning April 1860) Pony Express, who galloped the mails across
America.
    The departure of the dashing mail coach, with its quality horses, was one of the famous sights of London; but with the arrival of the railroads the coaching era came to an end.  However, the urban streets continued to resound with the clatter of horse-drawn vehicles, buses, four-wheeled "Growlers" and Hansom Cabs, swaying fire-engines dashing by at the gallop and the elegant carriages of the gentry.  With the arrival of the automobile, the horse-drawn vehicle gradually disappeared in North America as well as in Europe.
    The covered wagons of the Boers and American settlers made possible the opening up of their vast countries.  The almost indestructible Concord coaches, built by an American, not only established communications in the undeveloped West, but did the same for
South Africa and Australia.  Since man first learned to ride, riding horses have provided transport in every part of the world.

    The boat-shaped covered wagon usually associated with the American frontier actually saw far more use on the east coast, hauling produce from the Pennsylvania Dutch farms of Lancaster County to Philadelphia.  Conestoga drivers were tough on the road but gentle with their horses, said to descend from a Flemish breed introduced by William Penn, and were not ashamed to adorn their forelocks and bridles with ribbons and rosettes.  Over the horses they hung hoops with bells on them, all with different chimes.  These bells were the stiff price they had to pay for a helping hand if their wagon got stuck, so each driver looked forward to reaching his destination "with bells on."

    Horses were also the main means of transport for people.  As better roads began to be built in the 19th century, and the art of carriage-making reached its highest standards, coaches became lighter and faster, and very elegant horses, such as Trotters and Hackneys, were in demand to pull them.
    Horse-drawn buses were once a common sight.  Animals used for public transportation, unlike the carriage-horses of the wealthy, often led a hard life, working on slippery cobbled streets.
    With the arrival first of the railways and then the motor car, the horse was no longer needed for transport or agricultural work and it looked as if many of the draft breeds might die out.  However, businesses are now (1990) realizing that, for short trips, horses are more economical for deliveries than motorized vans, and are beginning to use them.
    Although horses are no longer needed in most countries for farming and transportation, several of the draft breeds from the heyday of the working horse have survived, and are valued for their own sakes.  They are used for demonstrations and showing, and in a small way for work.

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