Coaching days and coaching ways . missioners. At Hockliffe themail road to Manchester, Liverpool and Chester branchedoff from the direct road to Holyhead via Shrewsbury ;and at Hockliffe, on December 26th, 1836, the Manches-ter, Holyhead, Chester and Halifax Mails stuck fast ina snowdrift, within snowballing distance of each other-all the North-Western Mails, that is to say, at one fellswoop. Report says not what happened to the Manches-ter and Halifax Mails, so I presume they remained wherethey were till the snow melted ; but an attempt to dragthe Chester Mail out of the drift with waq-<jo
Coaching days and coaching ways . missioners. At Hockliffe themail road to Manchester, Liverpool and Chester branchedoff from the direct road to Holyhead via Shrewsbury ;and at Hockliffe, on December 26th, 1836, the Manches-ter, Holyhead, Chester and Halifax Mails stuck fast ina snowdrift, within snowballing distance of each other-all the North-Western Mails, that is to say, at one fellswoop. Report says not what happened to the Manches-ter and Halifax Mails, so I presume they remained wherethey were till the snow melted ; but an attempt to dragthe Chester Mail out of the drift with waq-<jon-horsesended in the fore axle giving way and the coach being A A 2 556 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS left behind. Upon which the bags were forwarded by apost-horse—with a man on his back I presume. As forthe Holyhead Mail, it was even more awkwardly situated,though I confess to not seeing clearly how such a state ofthings could be. However, the horses were almost buriedin an attempt to pull the coach out of a drift ; and the. Porch at Dunstable. coachman, with all the hardihood of extreme imbecility,venturing himself to alight, disappeared in the twinklingof an eye into the drift into which he had alighted. Atthis crisis of affairs a waggon fortunately appeared uponthis wintry scene—a waggon fortunately also with fourhorses in it. The four horses were at once pressed into the THE HOLYHEAD ROAD 357 service of the Mail, and succeeded after incredible exer-tions in getting it out of the hollow in which it wassunk. The Holyhead Road enters Buckinghamshire atBrickhills, seven miles six furlongs further on, andforty-five miles from London. But I must not leave these forty-five miles behind mewithout noting a curious sight which was often to beseen on this stretch from the tops of coaches before thelegislature forbade the use of dogs as animals of sight was an old pauper, born without legs but with asporting turn of mind. This natural bias led him tocontrive a smal
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