48 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



owned these pack-horses were called carriers, hence 

 the origin of the name carrier, to carry. This more 

 especially referred to those men who owned carts, 

 which were employed when the load a horse could 

 bear on his pack was not sufficient to compensate them 

 for the trouble and expense of a lengthened journey. A 

 carrier going from Selkirk to Edinburgh, a distance of 

 thirty-eight miles, required two weeks to accomplish 

 the distance both wavs. 



" In 167S, an agreement was made to run a coach 

 between Edinburgh and Glasgow, a distance of forty- 

 one miles, which was to be drawn by six horses, and to 

 perform the journey there and back again in six days." 



In the good old times, the difficulties attending 

 commercial enterprise and social intercourse arose 

 in a great measure from the want of good roads ; it 

 prevented the interchange of news and the sale or 

 purchase of agricultural or household commodities, 

 and even when the population immensely increased, 

 the progress made in road construction and main- 

 tenance was very slow. Goods had to be carried 

 on pack-horses throughout most parts of England ; 

 the price of grain and other agricultural produce 

 was thus affected, as in some districts they suffered 

 from a scarcity, whilst in other places they had 

 more than they required, and had no means of 

 disposing of them. I read the other day that this 

 inconvenience, when no longer felt in England, was 

 still experienced to such an extent in Spain, where 

 the people are naturally of a sluggish disposition, 

 that those living on the sea-coast until lately actually 

 preferred to get their supplies from the Baltic rather 

 than from the interior of their own country. 



Shakespeare speaks of pack - horses when, in 



