There weren't any cabs or buses like in the city; she didn't even see a town nearby.
French hackney-coaches received the name of fiacre from the Hotel St Fiacre, in the rue St Martin, Paris, where one Sauvage, who was the first to provide cabs for hire, kept his vehicles.
The characteristic conveyances on the canals of Venice - which take the place of cabs in other cities - are the gondolas, flat-bottomed boats, some 3 o ft.
The horse-drawn cabs which ply for hire in the streets, or wait at authorized " cab-stands," are of two kinds, the " hansom," a two-wheeled vehicle so named after its inventor (1834) and the " four-wheeler."
A long-standing cause of complaint on the part of the public has been the common refusal of cab-drivers to accept their legal fares, but, on the other hand, several attempts to introduce cabs with an automatic taximeter failed, until the introduction of motor cabs, of which a few had already been plying for some time when in 1907 a large number, provided with taximeters, were put into service.
