48 Transactions. 



their infancy ; so far as Colvend was concerned they were non- 

 existent. There was, indeed, a sub-office on the Southwick side 

 at Caulkerbush. On the Colvend side, the more populous side of 

 the parish, there was none. On neither side was there a runner 

 to distribute letters. On the Southwick side, if any letters 

 arrived, they were kept until called for, or they were sent by 

 some casual hand who happened to be going to where the letter was 

 addressed. In Colvend the case was still worse ; our letters 

 came no nearer than to Dalbeattie, five or six miles oS, and, not 

 only so, the Post Office in Dalbeattie was a small closet in or oif 

 the bar of the public-house, where the letters lay huddled together 

 with other articles. No arrangement whatever existed for dis- 

 persing them to their destination. I have known letters detained 

 for upwai'ds of a week. One case in particular occurs to me. A 

 young man, who was undergoing a sentence of penal servitude in 

 Pentonville Penitentiary, for whom I was instrumental in obtain- 

 ing remission of part of the sentence, had a passage purchased 

 for him to Canada. The letter containing his ticket to Canada, 

 paid for by his friends, was detained in the Dalbeattie Post Office 

 for more than a week ; and as a result the passage was forfeited. 

 After representation to the Shipping Company of the circum- 

 stances they generously allowed the young man to avail him- 

 self of a vessel for the succeeding voyage. 



Now (1894) there is not only the original sub-office at 

 Caulkerbush on the Southwick side, there is one at Lochend, one 

 at Rockcliffe, which is a money-order office, and one at Kippford, 

 which is also a money- order office, all on the Colvend side of the 

 parish ; and to expedite the delivery of letters, newspapers, and 

 parcels, there are two runners in Southwick and three in Colvend. 



For ten or fifteen years the Post Office authorities turned a 

 deaf ear to all our applications for a sub-office at Lochend, with 

 a runner between Colvend and Dalbeattie. In those days it was 

 no uncommon occurrence to have letters tampered with and 

 opened either from curiosity or with some worse motive. At 

 that time letters were fastened with wafers, or when of greater 

 importance they were sealed with wax. The day of envelopes 

 was not yet. A letter fastened by a wafer could be opened with- 

 out detection ; it was otherwise with a letter sealed with wax. 



The main industry of the parish, that on which its prosperity 

 depends and has always depended, is farming, agricultural and 

 pastoral. But there is another industry, ship-building and ship- 



