io8 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



When Smollett, the novelist, travelled from 

 Glasgow to Edinhurgh and on to London as a 

 yonng man, in 1739, he rode pack-horse as far as 

 Newcastle, for the simple reason that between 

 Glasgow and the Tyne there was neither coach, 

 cart, nor waggon on the road ; and in Yorkshire, 

 Cumberland, Devon and Cornwall, and the like 

 extreme corners of the land, where remoteness 

 from the world and the rugged nature of the 

 country conspired to exclude wheels, the packman 

 and his small hut sturdy breed of laden horses 

 alone kept the rural districts supplied with their 

 barest requirements until the first years of the 

 nineteenth century were come. The old pack- 

 men's and drovers' ways, narrow and winding to 

 avoid the turnpike-gates that once took toll of all 

 l)ut the foot-passenger, may still be traced on the 

 Yorkshire wolds, along the shoulders of the West- 

 morland and Cumberland fells, and by the rivers 

 and moors of Devon and Cornwall. Often they 

 are not even lanes, but only precipitous and rocky 

 tracks, eloquent of those old times that are com- 

 monly pictured so rosy, but were really very grey 

 and dour. Here and there the sign of the "Pack 

 Horse" still survives, and marks the old houses of 

 entertainment once frequentcHl by the j^ackmen of 

 that vanished past. The " Pack Horse " at Chip- 

 penham and those tAvo old houses at Turnham 

 Green, the " Old Pack Horse " and the " Pack 

 Horse and Talbot " were halting-places of the 

 packmen Avho travelled the Bath Boad. The last- 

 named house is now little more than an ordinary 



