240 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



A couple of miles further north another bridge 

 carries the Edinburgh road over Ale Water, and in 

 Selkirkshire are both the Ettrick and the Tweed. Few 

 streams of consequence crossed the path of the coach 

 in the last thirty miles. Inns, toll-bars, and mile- 

 posts carried the road at last to the Cross at Edin- 

 burgh, 391f miles from Hicks's Hall in London. 



Yet there were other beauties in the mail-coach- 

 man's eye than the trout and salmon streams which 

 watered the great west-coast Edinburgh road from 

 the Border. For the first twenty miles out of Carlisle 

 — to Langholm, in short — the highway is, or used 

 to be, a splendid one for quick driving ; it was a 

 road on which, if anywhere, De Quincey's stage of 

 eleven miles in fifty minutes might be possible. But 

 from Langholm to Mospaul, in Eoxburghshire, it is 

 hilly ; and Fiddleton Hill, if driven up with a heavy 

 load when the roads are deep, is a slope to be 

 remembered. 



Out of Carlisle ran on August 31, 1862, the very 

 last of its mail-coaches. The North British Eailway, 

 which was slowly creeping southward, had reached 

 Portobello, on its way to Berwick, June 22, 1846. 

 Turning sharp to the right hand from the Berwick 

 rail, it made a bee-line for Dalkeith and Galashiels. 

 It was at Fushiebridge in 1847, at Bowland in 1848, 

 and at St. Boswells in March, 1849, when, again 

 making due south, it bethought itself of Hawick, 

 where it arrived October 25, 1849. 



This broke the back of the Carlisle-Edinburgh 



