Her Majesty's Mails

There were also a few bad roads. Arthur Young, in his famous Tour in the North of England, has described a Lancashire turnpike-road of about the same period in the following vigorous phraseology:--"I know not in the whole range of language terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. To look over a map and perceive that it is a principal road, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may purpose to travel this terrible country to avoid it as they would the devil, for a thousand to one they will break their necks or their limbs by over-throws or breakings-down. They will here meet with ruts which actually measured four feet deep and floating with mud, and this only from a wet summer; what, therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending which it in places receives is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts, for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable memory." The road in question was that between Wigan and Preston, then a regular post-road and now on the trunk line of mail conveyance into Scotland. [52] Chambers' Traditions of Edinburgh, vol. i. p. 168. [53] Baines's History of Lancashire, p. 83. [54] The Bath post was no exception. The letters which left London at two o'clock on Monday morning did not reach Worcester, Norwich, or Birmingham till the Wednesday, Exeter not till Thursday, and Glasgow and Edinburgh for about a week.