My memory goes back to a time before railways had been established in Scotland, when Edinburgh and Glasgow were connected only by a coach-road and a canal, and when stage-coaches still ran from the two cities into England. I may therefore begin these reminiscences with some reference to modes of travel.

Probably few readers are aware how recently roads practicable for wheeled carriages have become general over the whole country. In the seventeenth century various attempts were made to run stage-coaches between Edinburgh and Leith, between Edinburgh and Haddington, and between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But these efforts to open up communication, even with the chief towns, appear to have met with such scant support as to be soon abandoned. The usual mode of conveyance, for ladies as well as gentlemen, was on horseback. A traveller writing in 1688 states that there were then no stage-coaches, for the roads would hardly allow of them, and that although some of the magnates of the land made use of a coach and six horses, they did so ‘with so much caution that, besides their other attendance, they have a lusty running footman on each side of the coach, to manage and keep it up in rough places.’ It was probably not until after the suppression of the Jacobite rising in 1715 that road-making and road-repair were begun in earnest. For strategic purposes, military roads were driven through the Highlands, and this important work, which continued until far on in the century, not only opened up the Highlands to wheeled traffic, but reacted on the general lines of communication throughout the country.[1] By the time that railways came into operation the main roads had been well engineered and constructed, and were fitted for all kinds of vehicles.

LOCOMOTION TO ENGLAND

Before the beginning of the railroad period, the inhabitants of Scotland had three means of locomotion into England. Those who were wealthy took their own carriages and horses, or hired post-horses from stage to stage. For the ordinary traveller, there were stage-coaches on land and steamboats on the sea.

With a comfortable carriage, and the personal effects of the occupants strapped on behind it, posting to London was one of the pleasant incidents of the year to those who had leisure and money at command. Repeated season after season, the journey brought the travellers into close acquaintance with every district through which the public road passed. They had a far greater familiarity with the details of these districts than can now be formed in railway journeys. They knew every village, church, and country-house to be seen along the route, and could mark the changes made in them from year to year. At the inns, where they halted for the night, they were welcomed as old friends, and made to feel themselves at home. This pleasant mode of travelling, so graphically described in Humphry Clinker, continued in use among some county families long after the stage-coaches had reached the culmination of their speed and comfort. My old friend, T. F. Kennedy of Dunure, used to describe to me the delights of these yearly journeys in his youth. Posting into England did not die out until after the completion of the continuous railway routes, when the failure of travellers on the road led to the giving up of post-horses at the inns.

STAGE-COACHES TO LONDON

One of my early recollections is to have seen the London coaches start from Princes Street, Edinburgh. Though railways were beginning to extend rapidly over England, no line had yet entered Scotland, so that the first part of the journey to London was made by stage-coach. There was at that time no line of railway, with steam locomotives, leading out of Edinburgh. Stage-coaches appear to have been tried between London and Edinburgh as far back as 1658, for an advertisement published in May of that year announces that they would ‘go from the George Inn without Aldersgate to Edinburgh in Scotland, once in three weeks for £4 10s., with good coaches and fresh horses on the roads.’ In May, 1734, a coach was advertised to perform the journey between Edinburgh and London ‘in nine days, or three days sooner than any other coach that travels the road.’ An improvement in the service, made twenty years later, was thus described in an advertisement which appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant for July 1st, 1754:

‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrow-bridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other Monday morning and to go to Burrow-bridge on Saturday night; and to set out thence on Monday morning and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant,

‘Hosea Eastgate.

‘Care is taken of small parcels according to their value.’