Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 44864-h.htm or 44864-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44864/44864-h/44864-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44864/44864-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/coachingdaysways00cumi Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text in small capitals has been changed to upper case. [Illustration] COACHING DAYS & WAYS by E. D. CUMING With Illustrations by G. Denholm Armour The British Sport Series Hodder and Stoughton COACHING The many boons conferred by Mr. John Palmer upon his generation faded before the advance of the railways; but he has deserved well of posterity, if only for that he altered the coach team from three horses to four. Until that enterprising man undertook to demonstrate that the coach could carry letters more rapidly and safely than could the post-boy, our ancestors had been content with the unicorn team; but after Palmer had astonished the world by making the journey from Bath to London, in 1784, at the rate of nearly seven miles an hour, the team of four horses gradually but steadily supplanted that of three in the stages on almost every road in the country. [Illustration: _The Stage Coach: Old Times Painting by G. D. Armour._] [Illustration] It is generally assumed that fast coaching only came into existence after the macadamisation of the roads; but this is not quite the case. Under favourable conditions the speed attained in pre-Macadam days was nearly as great as it became later. The _Sporting Magazine_ of June 1807 says: 'Lately one of the stage coaches on the North road ran from London to Stamford, a distance of 90 miles, in 9 hours 4 minutes. The passengers, four in number, breakfasted and dined on the road, so it must have run at the rate of 12 miles an hour all the time it was travelling.' The 'old heavies' discarded under Palmer's drastic rule worked out their lives as ordinary stage coaches, and some of these remained on the road until well on in the nineteenth century. Nimrod's description of the old-time coachman is worth giving:--