CHAPTEU VII 



SNOW AND FLOODS 



Severe weather, in the shape of frosts, thunder- 

 storms, or hurricanes, was jiowerless to stop the 

 coach-service, but exceptionally heavy snowfalls 

 occasionally did succeed in doing so for very brief 

 intervals ; and floods, although they never were or 

 could be so general as to wholly suspend coaching, 

 often brought individual coaches to grief. 



In the severe Avinter of 1798-9, when snow 

 fell heavily and continuously at the end of 

 January and during the first week of Pcbruary, 

 several mails, missing on Pel)ruary 1st, were still 

 to seek on April 27tli, and St. Martin's-le-Grand 

 mourned them as AvlioUy lost. By May Day, 

 however, they did succeed in running again ! 



Very few details survive of that exceptional 

 season, or of that other, in 1806, when Nevill, a 

 guard on the Bristol ]\Iail, Avas frozen to death ; 

 but the records of the great snoAvstorm that began 

 on the Christmas night of 1836 are A'erv full. 



Christmas Day, 1836, fell on a Sunday, and it 

 is Avortli notice, as a singular coincidence in this 

 country of only occasional heavy snoAvfalls, that 

 the Christmas night of 1886, also a Sunday night, 

 exactly half a century later, Avas marked by that 



