250 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



beneath. Thus, the mail-cart driver's hfe, in dark 

 and stormy weather, is not wholly free from perils 

 of which the public hear but little. 



Last winter, indeed — that is, January, 1895 — told 

 a story in these parts of something more than peril. 

 The forty-mile mail-cart ride from Wick to Helms- 

 dale crosses the Ord of Caithness at one point eight 

 hundred feet above sea-level. In the deep snow one 

 of the contractor's horses missed his footing, and the 

 poor beast fell down the side of the Ord. On another 

 day one of the convej-ances used on this road became 

 embedded in the snow, and there it remained from 

 December 29, 1894, to the 11th of the following 

 March. 



Such are some of the difficulties which the servants 

 of the public have to battle with in carrying Her 

 Majesty's mails in the Far North. 



The pride of the Scotch roads was undoubtedly the 

 Edinburgh and Aberdeen coach, Defiance, which was 

 to North Britain what the Telegraph and Quicksilver 

 had been to the South. Mr. Oswald Mitchell, of 

 Glasgow, gives its time-table— 129:^ miles in twelve 

 hours and ten minutes, including the crossing at 

 Queensferry and thirty minutes for stops by the way. 

 The finest spurts were ten miles in fifty minutes down 

 to the ferry, Sj miles in forty minutes running into 

 Perth, and GJ miles from Cupar Angus in half an 

 hour. 



Would that the Defiance could be classed as a 



