CH. XX ENGLISH COACHING 48 1 



These coaches carried the mail under contract 

 with the Government, and a guard in charge of it ; 

 in fact, the system seems to have been the same 

 as that of the mail-coaches in England, but less 

 elaborate. 



English Coaching. — The story of English coach- 

 ing is thoroughly told by Corbett, Malet, Har- 

 ris, Beaufort, Lennox, and Reynardson, whose 

 works are mentioned in the List of Books in this 

 volume. 



The characteristic feature of English coaching 

 was : that there were two kinds of coaches, namely 

 Mails, which were under special contract with the 

 Post-Office Department and carried mail guards, 

 who were the servants of the Government and not 

 of the coach proprietors ; on these Mails only a 

 limited number of passengers were carried ; and 

 secondly Coaches, which were loaded more heavily 

 and which had a guard of their own, and some- 

 times, on the less busy routes, no guard at all. 



Of course the original purpose of the guard 

 was to protect the mails, and he was therefore 

 armed with a blunderbuss ; for this reason, he was 

 often called ' the shooter.' The mails usually ran 

 at night. 



On unimportant roads there were no mail-coaches, 

 and the ordinary coaches carried Government mail- 

 bags. These coaches had places for fifteen passen- 

 gers ; four inside, and eleven outside ; hence the 



