14S ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



steam, passed between both places twice daily, the 

 fare being a shilling each way. 



Thus there were, before the railways came, two 

 routes for the mails, if not three, from London into 

 South Wales — (1) by Gloucester and Brecon ; (2) by 

 Bristol and across the Severn from New Passage ; 

 and (3) by Faringdon and Cirencester, and over the 

 Severn by the Old or Aust Passage. 



A good deal of interest attaches to the Passages ; 

 that called New being as old as the Eoman occupa- 

 tion of Britain, and the Old ferry being no more 

 ancient than the seventeenth century. 



Where the Bristol Channel narrows to the estuary 

 of the Severn, the river Avon turns off due east, 

 and makes Bristol, eight or ten miles inland, a sea- 

 port. A few miles further up the estuary, where the 

 Severn is more than two miles wide, there are, on 

 the Gloucestershire bank, New Passage, and on the 

 Monmouthshire bank, Portskewet. 



A mile or two further still are Aust or Old Passage 

 on one side, and Beachley on the other ; but the 

 latter is on the point of a peninsula lying between the 

 Severn and the Wye, and on a direct road to 

 Chepstow. New Passage is lOJ miles, and Aust 

 Passage 11 J miles, by road from Bristol. The branch 

 railway to New Passage is rather longer. 



For a length of time — say from Palmer's mail- 

 coach year up to about 1829 — the New Passage route 

 was, for the Glamorganshire mails at any rate, the 

 better of the two, as the Aust or Old ferry was ill 



