I06 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



tunity of a change in the arrangements to give some 

 of his young men a run with the overland mail to 

 Egypt. That was a journey to be remembered. The 

 late Edmund Yates was one of the selected group. 

 His trip extended to Cairo. He wrote a graphic 

 account of it which appeared originally in Household 

 Words, and afterwards in a collection of his early 

 pieces, entitled ' After Office Hours.' I had the good 

 luck to be sent to Egypt too. 



The charge of my seventy-eight boxes of mail-matter 

 was, until I got them safely on board the Vectis at 

 Marseilles, an exciting responsibility. A count of 

 seventy- seven at one point and seventy-nine at 

 another added, especially in the case of one short, 

 a not always welcome zest to the proceeding. At 

 London Bridge, Dover, Calais, Paris, and Marseilles 

 the count was a critical moment ; and riding in the 

 mail-van with the boxes through France, I furtively 

 took now and then a supplementary opportunity of 

 overhauling my charge. It was a moment of thankful 

 relief when the janissary at Alexandria sang out the 

 Arabic equivalent of seventy-eight, and especially 

 when her Majesty's Agent gave me a receipt in full 

 for my despatches. 



For many years the two lines of mail-packets in the 

 Mediterranean were steadily maintained. The South- 

 ampton boats conveyed to Alexandria the bulk of the 

 overland mail at the cheaper (sixpence the half-ounce 

 letter) of the two rates of postage in force, and the 

 boats from Marseilles to Malta and Alexandria took 



