G.G. has perhaps a little overrated the import of the passage he quotes
from Schultz's travels. "_Dass wir kaum 6 Stunden gefahren sind_"--even
supposing there is no misprint of a 6 for an 8 or 9, which is quite
possible--will not, I apprehend, bear the meaning he collects from the
words, viz. that _the journey occupied no more than six hours_, or less
even than so much.
In the first place, I believe it will be allowed by those familiar with
German idioms, that the phrase _kaum 6 Stunden_, is not to be rendered
as though it meant _no more or less than 6_; but rather thus: "but
little more than 6;"--the "_little more_," in this indefinite form of
expression, being a very uncertain quantity, it may be an hour or so.
Then he says merely that they "kaum 6 Stunden _gefahren_ sind," which
may mean that the time _actually spent in motion_ did not exceed the
number of hours indicated, whatever that may be; and not that the
journey itself, "_including stoppages_," took up no more. Had he meant
to say this, I imagine he would have used a totally different phrase: e.
g. _dass wir binnen kaum mehr als 6 Stunden nach London schön gekommen
sind;_ or something like these words.
Making these allowances, the report is conceivably true, even of a
period a century old, as regards the rate of day-travelling on the high
road to Norwich, still at that time a place of much business with
London. The second journey of the Pastor on the same road was, it seems,
_by night_: but what perhaps is of more consequence to explain is the
apparent difference between it and the other. It appears that in the
second instance we are told _when_ he arrived at his journey's end; in
the former, nothing beyond the number of hours he was actually moving,
may have been communicated to us.