and hay, being carried in this way for short
distances A set of people known by the name of
cadgers, who have given a word to our slang
dictionaries, plied regularly between different
places, selling salt, fish, poultry, eggs, and
earthenware. These things were carried on
pack-horses, in sacks or baskets suspended on
each side of the animal. In carrying goods
between distant places it was necessary to
employ a cart, as all that a horse could carry
on his back was not sufficient to pay for a
long journey. These carriers, if we include
delays, often went at the rate of a quarter of a
mile an hour! Mr. J. R. McCulloch records it
as a fact that the common carrier from Selkirk to
Edinburgh, thirty-eight miles distant, required
a fortnight for his journey between the two
places, going and returning! The road, it must
be said, was originally one of the most dangerous
in the whole country, for a large part of it lay
in the bottom of a district called Gala-water,
from the name of the chief stream, the channel
of the water being, when not flooded, the track
chosen as the most level, and the easiest to
travel in.

Between the largest cities, says the same
authority, the means of travelling were very
little better. In 1678, an agreement was made
to run a coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow,
a distance of forty-four miles, which was to be
drawn by six horses, and to perform the journey
from Glasgow to Edinburgh and back in six days.
Even a century later it took a day and a half for
the stage-coach to travel from Edinburgh to
Glasgow.

As late as 1763, there was but one stage-
coach from Edinburgh to London, which set
out once a month, taking from twelve to fourteen
days to perform the journey. In 1830, six
or seven coaches set out each day from both
ends on the same road, and the time for executing
the journey was reduced to about forty-
eight hours. Now, it is almost needless to say,
that by the Post-office limited mail express
train, we may travel the same distance on a
comfortable coach in ten hours and a half.

At this time the "franking" of letters was
a valuable privilege conceded to members of
parliament, and others in authority, and largely
used for the accommodation of their friends.
The Post-office managers complain very loudly
of the strange articles at present sent through
the post, but in those days their complaints
were much louder. The "franking," which
began with letters, gradually extended to small
parcels; from small parcels it got to cover large
ones, and at last the mail-carriers were very
much shocked at seeing a huge feather-bed
registered as a free letter. Inquiry, indignation,
an improved system of mail-carrying, the
extension of population and correspondence,
and reduced charges for postage, at last put an
end to the franking privilege.

While almost anybody could rob the post
through this abused "free-list," the poor mails
were just as ill-treated on the road. The most
feeble thief of the day could rob a postboy,
and rob him by the most feeble contrivance.
The French mail was often stopped on its road
to Dover by a piece of string stretched across
the entrance of Kent-street, Borough. This
caught the horse's legs, caused him to stumble,
and throw the postboy off, who returned to the
chief office, and coolly reported the loss of his
mail-bags. Rural postmen were always ready
to be robbed by any stranger who appeared on
the road, and it was long before stage-coachmen,
fed, as they were, with lying stories about the
daring of fancy highwaymen, had courage not
to stand and deliver at the first impudent
summons. The feather-beds, so liberally franked at
the expense of the country, were very often
carried off into criminal bondage, and few tax-
payers can help rejoicing at this punishment of
their enemies.

MB. SAMUEL SMILES, in his recent Lives of
the Engineers, has collected from various
sources a number of amusing details about
English roads and road-travelling in the last
century. In 1690, Lord Chancellor Cowper
politely described Sussex as a "sink of about
fourteen miles broad." People in some parts
used to travel by swimming; and it was almost
as difficult for old people to get to church in
Sussex during winter as it was in the Lincoln
Fens, where they rowed there in boats. Fuller
once saw an old lady being drawn to church
in her own coach by the aid of six oxen.
The Sussex roads were so bad as to pass
into a by-word. A contemporary says that
in travelling through a slough of extraordinary
miryness, it used to be called "the Sussex bit
of the road;" and he satirically adds, that the
reason why the Sussex girls were so long-limbed
was because of the tenacity of the mud in that
county; the practice of pulling the foot out of
it by the strength of the ankle tending to stretch
the muscle and lengthen the bone.

The roads in the neighbourhood of London
were as bad as those in Sussex. Chertsey was
a two days' journey from town; and Lord
Hervey, writing from Kensington in 1736, says:
"The road from this place to London is so
infamously bad that we live here in the same
solitude as we would do if cast upon a rock in
the middle of the ocean; and all the Londoners
tell us that there is between them and us an
impassable gulf of mud." Royal carriages stuck
fast in the mud for hours together, defying all
efforts to remove them.

It was only a few of the main roads out of
London that were in any way practicable for
coaches. On the occasion of any state visits,
labourers went before the royal train to mend
the ways. Judges were thrown into bog-holes
while going on circuit, and kept the juries
waiting while they were being dug out. Sometimes,
they fell into sloughs, and had to be
hauled out by plough-horses.

It was said, in 1752, that a Londoner would
no more think of travelling into the west of
England for pleasure, than of going to Nubia.
"Of all the cursed roads," says Arthur Young
in 1769, "that ever disgraced this kingdom in