The courier had a comparatively easy journey from Quebec down the south shore of the St. Lawrence to the entrance of the portage. There had been a fair road for some years through that part of the country, and in 1786 Finlay, by the governor's orders, settled post houses on the route in order to facilitate the travel of mail couriers and others. The gentleman whose travels through Canada have been mentioned, observed that it was a comfortable trip through these parts, and that the country was thickly settled, there being from twelve to sixteen families to the mile.
The eastern end of the long route, that is, the part from St. John to Halifax, consisted of a trip across the bay of Fundy from St. John to Annapolis, and a journey by land through the Annapolis valley from Annapolis to Windsor, thence to Halifax. The road from Annapolis to Halifax is described by Finlay as very rough, but it was covered in three days in a one-horse carriage, and in two days on horseback.
The maintenance of a continuous communication between Quebec and Halifax was effected in the following manner.[134] Canada controlled the section from Quebec to Fredericton, and provided couriers who made fortnightly trips over this part of the route. The section down the St. John river from Fredericton to St. John, and thence by the bay to Annapolis, was under the supervision of the government of New Brunswick; while the eastern part, which lay entirely in Nova Scotia, was naturally managed by that government. In the summer of 1787, the governor, Lord Dorchester, sent Finlay over the route to Halifax, to see what improvements would be required in order to enable this service to compete with the service over the shorter route from Montreal to New York. Dorchester at the same time submitted the whole scheme to the colonial office, intimating that if the home government saw fit to establish a packet service between England and Halifax, the arrangements for the inland conveyance through the provinces would be found satisfactory.
Lord Sydney, the colonial secretary, expressed the king's approval of the measures taken,[135] and stated that the postmasters general had directed Finlay to carry the plans into execution in a manner correspondent to Lord Dorchester's wishes. The lack of sufficient packet boats would prevent the establishment of a regular service from England for the moment, but it was hoped that vessels enough might be spared for the route, to make the service though not exactly regular yet of substantial benefit to the colonies.
Finlay in the course of his visit to St. John and Halifax found much to encourage the hope that, with the improvement of the route, a satisfactory outlet from Canada to the sea would be obtained at Halifax. The chief trouble, he foresaw, lay in the divided responsibility for the maintenance of an efficient service, owing to the fact that post office authorities in the several provinces were entirely independent of one another. Indeed, at that very time, the deputy postmasters general of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were at strife with one another, and were carrying on an active newspaper war as to which of the two was accountable for certain defects in the service.[136] The distribution of the expense of the part of the service they had undertaken to maintain was another cause of complaint.
Finlay came back to Canada after his trip to Halifax bringing with him two strong convictions. One was that the service to be successful must be in the hands of one person. The other was that the correspondence between the provinces themselves was not of sufficient volume to cover the outlay, and that unless there were frequent English mails exchanged at Halifax, the service would have to be dropped for lack of revenue to meet the large expense. He considered that if six mails a year could be exchanged between England and Halifax, the postage arising would more than pay the expenses of the service.
Dorchester lost no time in transmitting to England the substance of Finlay's recommendations, adding his own opinion that as soon as a continuous road to St. John had been constructed, and a sufficient number of people had been settled upon it to keep it open in winter, the foot couriers would be replaced by horsemen, and then the mails would be carried more speedily and securely than by way of New York.
The governor, also, suggested that the postal service in all the provinces be put under the direction of Finlay, who was a man of much experience, zeal, and practical ability, and who was entitled to this consideration from having lost a similar appointment by the late war.[137]
The home government approved of Dorchester's recommendation as to Finlay, whose commission as deputy postmaster general was extended to comprise the whole of the colonies in British North America. At the same time Dorchester received the gratifying news that the post office had managed so to arrange matters that commencing with March 1788 the packet boats which ran between Falmouth and New York would pass by way of Halifax, stopping there two days on both the inward and the outward voyages.
The service to Halifax was to be limited, however, to eight monthly trips between March and October, as the admiralty had been informed that the prevailing winds off the Nova Scotia coast during the winter months were so contrary as to make it impracticable for the packets to call there during those months.[138]