OX ACCIDEXTS. 



; 93 



sition to the old-established Shrewsbury and Chester 

 ' Highflyer' — forty miles of as good ground for a coach 

 as can be found in E no land. 



A most awful accident befel the fellow-servant to Jem 

 Robins, equally the effect of carelessness. In descending 

 Overton Hill, between Wrexham and Ellesmere, he 

 suffered the coach to get the better of his horses ; and in 

 passing the bridge at the bottom, in a turn, the coach 

 made such a heel that he was thrown from his box into 

 the River Dee, with a fall of about forty feet. He had 

 his box coat on at the time, and the river was swollen by 

 rain, so that his life must have been lost, had not a fisher- 

 man been passing accidentally in his coracle, and picked 

 him up. 



I have to record a singular escape that once happened 

 to myself, in a coach of my own. I took a party, consist- 

 ing of four inside and four out, a journey of two hundred 

 and twenty miles. After I had set down my load, with the 

 exception of one on the box, and was walking the horses 

 to the stables, the hinder axletree broke short in two. 1 I 

 had observed the wheels had not tracked as they ought, 

 for the last stage or two, and I intended having her in 

 dock when I got to my journey's end. Whenever it is 

 perceived that the wheels of a coach make four tracks, 

 instead of two, on a straight road, there is always some- 

 thing wrong. 



As nothing can be depended upon in the way of art, 



1 An accident similar to this once happened to the Worcester ' Old Fly,' 

 a long-established coach. In the act of changing horses in a town, one of 

 her axletrees gave way, and down she went. 



