180 EAKLY MODES OF CONVEYANCE. PART 1IT. 



Glasgow to London, lie rode partly on pack-horses, partly 

 by waggon, and partly on foot; and the adventures 

 which he described as having befallen Roderick Random 

 are supposed to have been drawn in a great measure 

 from his own experiences during the journey. 



A cross-country merchandise traffic gradually sprang 

 up between the northern counties, since become pre- 

 eminently the manufacturing districts of England ; and 

 long lines of pack-horses laden with bales of wool and 

 cotton traversed the hill ranges which divide Yorkshire 

 from Lancashire. Wlritaker says that as late as 1753 

 the roads near Leeds consisted of a narrow hollow way 

 little wider than a ditch, barely allowing of the passage 

 of a vehicle drawn by horses in a single line ; this deep 

 narrow road being flanked by an elevated causeway 

 covered with flags or boulder stones. When travellers 

 encountered each other on this narrow track, they often 

 tried to wear out each other's patience rather than 

 descend into the dirt alongside. The raw wool and bale 

 goods of the district were nearly all carried along these 

 flagged ways on the backs of single horses ; and it is 

 difficult to imagine the delay, the toil, and the perils by 

 which the conduct of the traffic was attended. On horse- 

 back before daybreak and long after nightfall, these 

 hardy sons of trade pursued their object with the spirit 

 and intrepidity of foxhunters ; and the boldest of their 

 country neighbours had no reason to despise either tin Mi- 

 horsemanship or their courage. 1 The Manchester trade 

 was carried on in the same way. The chapmen there 

 used to keep their gangs of pack-horses, which accom- 

 panied them to all the principal towns, bearing their 

 goods in packs, which they sold to their customers. 



1 ' Loides and Elmete,' by T. D. 

 Whitaker, LL.D., 1816, p. 81. Not- 

 withstanding its dangers, Dr. Whi- 

 taker seems to have been of opinion 

 that the old mode of travelling was 



state of ro:vds and manners," lie Bays, 

 "it was impossible that move than 

 One death could happen at once; 

 what, by any possibility, could take 

 place analogous to a race betwixt two 



even safer than that which imrne- Btage-ooacbes, in which the lives of 

 diately followed it: "Under the old thirty OF forty distressed and helpless 



