TELEGRAPHS ON THE TRACK 299 



telegraph -office and entreated the clerk on duty to 

 write a needful message for him, a timely reference 

 to Bradshaw chased the cloud from his brow. 

 ' Eachel departed at eight o'clock' — not, however, 

 this life, as the stricken husband had concluded from 

 the telegram, but by the eight o'clock train from 

 Plymouth for the North. 



Not snow-storms alone, but wind-storms, have called 

 out the energies of the Post-Office, on the mail-coach 

 track, in sending its mails by railway, and especially 

 in maintaining the telegraph. 



Gales occasionally traverse these islands at great 

 speed — at more, even, than sixty or eighty miles an 

 hour — when the telegraph-wrack is more general, and 

 reinstallation proportionately more expensive than 

 ordinarily in the winter. 



The gale of December 21-22, 1894, was, according 

 to a paper read before the Koyal Meteorological 

 Society by Mr. Charles Harding, one of exceptional 

 severity. It certainly blew trees across the telegraph 

 lines in such numbers that in Lancashire and York- 

 shire, Durham and Northumberland, Cumberland 

 and Westmorland, in the West of Scotland and in 

 the North of Ireland, the damage done was general, 

 and cost many thousands of pounds to repair. For 

 four consecutive hours the velocity of the wind ex- 

 ceeded one hundred miles an hour. At Fleetwood its 

 violence was greatest ; there, at nine a.m., on the 

 22nd, the wind blew continuously for some time at 



