- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1931 : July]
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-
- Date
- July 1931
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-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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North Carolina historical review [1931 : July]
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The North Carolina
Historical Review
Volume VIII July, 1931 Number 3
OVERLAND TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION
IN NORTH CAROLINA, 17634789
By Charles Christopher Crittenden
In the latter part of the eighteenth century North Carolina’s
facilities for transportation and travel by land, although considerably
improved since the proprietary period,1 were still very inadequate.
What with wretched roads, undesirable accommodations, and many
other hardships to be faced, the wayfarer could expect no easy jour¬
ney. Usually, though not always, conditions were those described
by the Englishman, Smyth, who, writing of a trip taken shortly
before 1775 from Petersburg, Virginia, to Halifax, North Caro¬
lina, commented that: “This was a most unpleasant journey; bad
accommodation, bad roads, bad company and attendance, and, in
short, everything disagreeable in the extreme.”2
Roads were of the worst.3 In the east they were full of deep ruts
through sand and mud, since too little attention was paid to sur¬
facing and drainage. It was said that “the only making they bestow
upon the roads in the flat part of the country is cutting out the
trees to the necessary breadth, in as even a line as they can, and
where the ground is wet, they make a small ditch on either side.”4
In the piedmont, roads were made difficult by great boulders and
steep hills, as well as by that notorious red clay which in rainy
weather becomes at the same time both sticky and slippery. Governor
Josiah Martin described the region to the west of Hillsborough as
1 A valuablc discussion of conditions of travel in the Albemarle during the proprietary period is
1’. W. Clonts’s “Travel and Transportation in Colonial North Carolina," North Carolina Historical
Review, III. 1 6-35 .
’ J- F. D, Smyth, A Tour in the United States of America, I, 83. (Hereafter cited as Smyth.)
• In dry weather certain stretches of road were not difficult to travel. Elkanah Watson, Men and
Times of the Revolution, p. 250 and passim: Hugh Finlay, Journal, pp. SI, 85, SO. 87.
* "Description of North Carolina by Alexander Sclinw," E. W. and
С.
M. Andrews (editors), Journal
of a Lady of Quality, p. 2S0.
[ 233 1
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