IKCf.EMEXCY OF THE WEATHER. l49 



all communication by the usual modes of 

 travelling was entirely suspended. The im- 

 pediments to the mails were of the most 

 serious description. Not a single mail of the 

 26th of December, which ought to have ar- 

 rived by six o'clock on Monday morning, 

 reached the Post Office before half-past eight 

 in the evening. Of the mails sent out from 

 London on Christmas night, the Dover went 

 twenty miles and returned, the coachman and 

 guard declaring the roads to be utterly im- 

 passable. The letters were conveyed daily 

 from Canterbury to Dover on sledges drawn 

 by three and four horses, tandem. Occasion- 

 ally they were forwarded by means of pack- 

 horses. The fare for a passenger on a sledge 

 was two pounds. 



Occasionally passengers suffered from the 

 inclemency of the weather. On one occasion 

 when the Bath coach arrived at Chippenham, 

 the people of the inn were surprised at seeing 

 three outside passengers lying in a state of 

 insensibility. On a nearer approach they per- 

 ceived that vitality had been actually extinct 

 in two of them for some time, the bodies 

 being perfectly cold. The third, a soldier, had 

 some faint signs of animation left, but he 



