CHAP, vi.] COACH, FERRY, AND RAILWAY 45 



cause of the disaster was that one of the horses had become 

 unruly. The assignment of the disaster to a judgment for 

 travelling on Sunday, may be looked on as a state of feeling 

 very desirable to be removed by changing times, which have 

 brought a larger charitableness and greater common sense. 



A novel custom was associated with the Old Passage. A 

 man suspected of possible infection of hydrophobia, was 

 put into the salt water, and towed about in the Severn at 

 the stern of a boat. In the event of a man having been 

 bitten by a stray dog, this operation made his village ac- 

 quaintances much easier in their minds about him. They 

 had also the fun, and in any case the patient would not be 

 the worse for a thorough good washing ! 



The appliances of the ferry were a steam boat and various 

 sailing boats, including one known as the Mail-boat, as well 

 as on the Beachley side, an apparatus acting as a telegraph. 

 This consisted of an arrangement of board which, when at 

 rest, resembled a wooden window shutter about a couple of 

 yards square, fastened to one of the buildings ; and, by some 

 code of signals of an exceedingly simple sort, requisite direc- 

 tions were conveyed across the river as to the boat service. 



On our side there was one solidly built pier, serviceable 

 for shipment of passengers or goods at all states of the 

 tide, and accessible for all kinds of carriage use from 

 the good road which terminated at the top in front of a 

 small kind of hotel ; it likewise had the desirable security, 

 for the greater part of its length, of strong posts with chains 

 between them. On the Aust side there was a high- and also 

 a low-water pier, not far apart, a little way below the inn, 

 and if the tide served for boats to reach these all went fairly 

 well after disembarking, but it was a different matter at half- 

 tide. The half-tide pier was a considerable distance from 

 the others a quarter or half a mile away beneath the cliffs, 

 and mud and stones and the roughest imaginable affairs in 

 the guise of road had to be got through or over on the way 

 to the inn. The effect of this on the springs, paint, &c., 

 of a good Long Acre-built barouche, when by some unhappy 

 necessity it had to be committed to such a method of transit, 

 may be easily imagined. The passage for a carriage was, 

 at the best, not well arranged. A muster of fishermen or 

 boatmen was made, and the carriage was turned on the pier 

 and dragged more or less rapidly on board, and there, I 

 presume, secured from movement, but, certainly, by no 

 means from danger, for part of the freight might consist of 

 half a dozen or a dozen bullocks, which shifted to one side or 



