1 62 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



attack and their going every day, including even 

 Sundays. One class of correspondents, indeed, 

 suffered inconvenience for a time while reorganisa- 

 tion was in progress. These were the residents 

 on the bye-roads and in the smaller towns not 

 situated on the great mail routes. It is obvious 

 that the coaches could not be made to go along 

 the secondary and very ill-kept roads, and that, 

 even could that have been done, it would not 

 have been possil)le, in the lack of passenger traffic 

 along them, to have found contractors prepared to 

 horse the coaches at the price they gladly accepted 

 on the main arteries of travelling. The postboys 

 had, on the other hand, gone everywhere, and the 

 complex system of bye- and cross-posts established 

 by Allen and maintained l)y these riders was 

 really, for that time, a wonderful achievement. 

 Eesidents off the mail routes uoav began to miss 

 the postboy's horn, and found their letters lying 

 for days at the post-offices until they were called 

 for. Instead of the post coming to the smaller 

 towns and villages, those minor places had to 

 send to the nearest post-ofiice on the mail-coach 

 road. These inconveniences only gradually dis- 

 appeared on the organisation of a service of mail- 

 carts from the post-towns to rural post-offices, 

 collecting and delivering the cross-posts ; and it 

 was not until another ten years had passed that 

 the bye-mails became, as well as the direct ones, 

 what they should always have been, quicker than 

 any other public conveyance on the roads. With 

 this at length accomplished, the leakage of Post 



