The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

"The Bath and Bristol mails, due on Tuesday morning, were abandoned eighty miles from London, and the mail-bags brought up in a postchaise-and-four by the two guards, who reached London at six o'clock on Wednesday morning. For seventeen miles of the distance they had to come across fields." "The Manchester down-mail reached St Albans, and getting off the road into a hollow, was upset. The guard returned to London in a post-chaise and four horses with the bags and passengers." "About a mile from St Albans, on the London side, a chariot without horses was seen on Tuesday nearly buried in the snow. There were two ladies inside, who made an earnest appeal to the mail-guard, whose coach had got into a drift nearly at the same spot. The ladies said the postboy had left them to go to St Albans to get fresh cattle, and had been gone two hours. The guard was unable to assist them, and his mail being extracted, he pursued his journey for London, leaving the chariot and ladies in the situation where they were first seen." "The Devonport mail arrived at half-past eleven o'clock. The guard, who had travelled with it from Ilminster, a distance of 140 miles, states that journey to have been a most trying one to both men and cattle. The storm commenced when they reached Wincanton, and never afterwards ceased. The wind blew fresh, and the snow and sleet in crossing Salisbury Plain were driving into their faces so as almost to blind them. Between Andover and Whitchurch the mail was stuck fast in a snowdrift, and the horses, in attempting to get out, were nearly buried. The coachman got down, and almost disappeared in the drift upon which he alighted. Fortunately, at this juncture, a waggon with four horses came up, and by unyoking these from the waggon and attaching them to the mail, it was got out of the hollow in which it was sunk."