One of his first lessons in Ireland was, he tells us, the great difference between the pedlar doomed to tramp on foot, and his more fortunate fellow who could post or ride on horseback. When he became a small shopkeeper at Carrick, the need of equestrian conveyance was brought home to him in a still more forcible manner. “I supplied,” he writes, “my Carrick shop with gold-leaf from Waterford, going down in Tom Mahony’s boat to buy it. Carrick-on-Suir is twelve or thirteen miles from Waterford by land, but the windings of the river make it twenty-four by water. This boat, then, was the only public conveyance. The time of its departure had to depend upon the tide, and it took four or five hours to make the journey.” One day, going to Waterford by the boat, Bianconi got sodden with the wet, and was laid up with cold and pleurisy for a couple of months. This Irish experience was putting him in the right track; and in 1815, when good horses were to be had cheap, in consequence of the peace, he had the courage to start his cars, running at first between Carrick and Clonmel, a distance of some twelve miles. At first Bianconi only contemplated carrying the poorer people. There was the aristocratic mail-coach for the people of quality; but greatness was thrust upon him. In 1830 he carried the mails direct from the post-office, and had bought up some leading coaching lines. In his latter years he had 1,400 horses at work, and daily covered 3,800 miles. Still further, to give the reader an idea of the extent of his business, we may note there were 140 stations for the change of horses, and that these latter consumed from 3,000 to 4,000 tons of hay, and from 30,000 to 40,000 barrels of oats annually. In England Bianconi could never have made his fortune in this way. In Ireland he appeared at the right time, and was the right man in the right place.