A JOURNEY DUE NORTH 25 1 



mail-coach, but that is not possible ! For although 

 magnificent with coachman and guard in red coats 

 with yellow collars, she carried, besides them, fifteen 

 passengers — four inside and eleven outside, seventeen 

 persons in all — instead of only seven or eight, as the 

 mail would have done. George Stow would have 

 been aghast at the sight of her load and her pace ! 



I do not think that the feat of endurance said to 

 have been accomplished by Captain Barclay (other- 

 wise Alladice), of Ury, in driving the mail from 

 London to Edinburgh, close on four hundred miles, 

 without giving up the ribands over a smgle stage, has 

 ever been excelled, unless, indeed, by Sir Eobert Gary 

 in 1603. 



The latter rode on horseback, as is well known, 

 over much the same ground, carrying North the 

 tidings of the death of Queen Elizabeth, and covering 

 the distance in about sixty hours. The great Northern 

 highway, or horse-road, was a mere track, full of 

 holes, and in parts well-nigh impassable. He stopped, 

 for any length of time, at only three places on the 

 way, sustaining a bad fall at one of them. At the 

 best of times, and with roads in the finest order, the 

 mail, more than two hundred years later, took forty- 

 two hours to reach Edinburgh. Captain Barclay, 

 born in 1779, was no common man. On June 1, 

 1809, being then thirty years of age, he started to 

 walk, on Newmarket Heath, for a thousand con- 

 secutive hours, a mile in each hour. Barclay finished 

 his task on July 12, his weight being reduced during 



