[Illustration: _Modern American Station Wagon_]
_Both from Studebaker’s (Chicago) Catalogue_]
Indeed, the tourist in America will come away with the impression that there is hardly a family in the continent which does not possess at least one buggy or waggon. They can be driven, too, at a very great pace. In this connection it is interesting to notice that it was a buggy which Lord Lonsdale selected in order to carry out his great driving feat in 1891, when “he undertook to drive four stages of five miles within an hour, using for the first three stages one, a pair, a team, and riding postilion in the fourth.”
There are, of course, many varieties, several invented after Thrupp wrote the above account. Of these some are peculiar to a particular State, while others seem to be in general use throughout the continent. In Chicago, for instance, and other towns of the middle west, the commonest buggy seems to be the _bike wagon_, of which a variety is the _cut-under bike wagon_, where the tray is double—the seat forming a bridge between its two parts.
Stanhopes and phaetons are also manufactured in America, though on a much lighter scale than in England. Another popular American carriage is the _surrey_, which has the two-seated arrangements of the larger waggons, but is without the tray. The _station wagon_, very popular in New England, resembles the old English chariot, and differs from it only in its driving seat, which is on a level with the inside seat and directly against the front lines of the carriage-body. This is one of the most comfortable carriages in the country. The _buckboard_, even slenderer than the buggy, is hardly more than the skeleton of a carriage, but seems none the less popular on that account. The _barge_ is the name given in Massachusetts to a two-seated waggon, and the word has a curious origin. It seems probable that it is a relic of the days when in that part of the country the boat sleighs used in the winter were put upon wheels in the summer. At a later date ordinary waggons were used for summer traffic, but the old name stuck. And I dare say there are a dozen or more local names of some peculiarity in other parts of America which to-day are given to carriages not in the least like those to which the name was originally applied.