A JOURNEY DUE NORTH 245 



' It would be too dark, and the passengers would be 

 too fatigued, to notice, as the coach rolled past Sand- 

 hill, a large old-fashioned building, one of the row 

 which fronted the river. From the westernmost 

 window of the first-floor, according to tradition, 

 eloped on the night of November 18, 1772, Bessy 

 Surtees, wife next day of John Scott, afterwards the 

 Vij^tvf^i^o^^s Baron Eldon and Lord High Chancellor of 

 England. The house still stands, and a tablet on it 

 commemorates this fact. 



Perhaps the up journey may have had more pleasur- 

 able features. AYith four fresh horses from the 

 Queen's Head, and strengthened and restored by a 

 good supper and parting cup, the travellers started, 

 let us suppose at nine o'clock on a warm summer's 

 evening, down Pilgrim Street, calling at the post-office 

 in the Arcade for the night mails. 



There was a time, indeed, before 1832 — before, in 

 fact, Grainger built the Arcade — when the coach 

 passed the old post-office in Dean Street ; and inhabi- 

 tants still living can recollect the bags in the small 

 hours being raised or lowered by rope from an upper 

 window. 



Slipping smoothly across Tyne Bridge, coach and 

 horses, with their load, began the ascent south- 

 wards through Gateshead. That long climb up an 

 average incline of one in twenty- one for two whole 

 miles, almost to Ayton Bank, gave passengers the 

 chance of seeing how a chosen team, drawmg a well- 

 laden coach, could trot and canter up the slope and 



