STAGE COACHES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, n 



The old stage or travelling waggon, which was used 

 for the conveyance of passengers and merchandise, de- 

 serves some notice. On the principal roads, strings of 

 stag-e-wagfeons used to travel together. Besides these 

 conveyances there were 'strings of horses,' pack-horses, 

 travelling somewhat quicker than the waggons, for the 

 conveyance of light goods, or passengers, and generally 

 on narrow paths known as ' pack-horse roads.' One of 

 these pack-horse roads of 200 years ago may still be seen 

 in a good state of preservation about a mile eastward 

 from Haltwhistle in Northumberland. It adjoins the old 

 mail coach road, and is within a hundred yards of the 

 railway. Thus brought within a stone's throw of each 

 other are pack-horse road, coach-road, and rail, marking 

 the changes which a couple of centuries have wrought in 

 the means of locomotion. The stage waggons, as a rule, 

 travelled at an extremely slow pace ; and except on the 

 Liverpool and London road, they seldom changed horses, 

 but used the same teams throughout. The pace indeed 

 was proverbially so slow in the North of England, that 

 it was jocularly said that the publicans of Furness in 

 Lancashire, when they saw the conductors of the travel- 

 ling merchandise trains appear in sight, on the summit of 

 Wrynose Hill, on their way between Whitehaven and 

 Kendal, would begin to brew their beer, always having a 

 stock of good drink manufactured by the time the 

 travellers reached the village ! 



It was long after the invention of coaches that a 

 coach-box was added to the body. ' The coachman ' 

 says Mr. Strutt, ' joineth a horse, fixed to match a saddle- 



