92 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



the letter- bags were taken out, and forwarded to 

 London by express. 



" Thursday. — The few accounts received from the 

 provinces yesterday were of rather a gloomy descrip- 

 tion. The atmosphere still appears to be loaded with 

 snow, and a second heavy descent is fearecb The 

 Dover mail, sent out on Wednesday night, only 

 reached Rochester and then turned back. 



" Beyond, the country is deeply buried in snow, 

 and there has been no communication by horse or foot 

 downward since Sunday. By Chatham lines, the snow 

 is from thirty to forty feet deep. Application having, 

 on Tuesday, been made to the Commandant of the 

 forces stationed at Chatham, by the surveyor of roads, 

 for assistance, all the military were ordered out, and 

 about 600 men have ever since been employed in 

 clearing the roads. 



" The snow has drifted to such an extent between 

 Leicester and Northampton as to occasion consider- 

 able difficulty and danger. In some parts of the road 

 passages have been cut (sufficiently wide for a coach 

 to pass), where the snow had drifted to the depths of 

 thirty, forty, and, in some places, fifty feet. At 

 Stroud, near Rochester, at the bottom of the hill, near 

 the milestone, a cottage was completely buried in snow, 

 and the inmates had to be dusf out. 



''Manchester. — ^The principal roads which have 

 thus been rendered for a time nearly or wholly 

 impassable are the road to Sheffield, by Glossop and 

 the woodlands, which is choked up beyond Glossop in 

 the wild district of the woodlands ; the London road 

 in the south of Warwickshire ; also between Ash- 

 bourne and Derby (where one of the mails is said to 

 be stopped) ; and it is also said to be impassable a 



