Meanwhile, other provincial towns had not been idle, and we must needs make a slight divergence here to give an outline of what Glasgow was attempting in local intercommunication. Nothing thus early was on the road between Glasgow and London, but strenuous efforts were made to link Glasgow and Edinburgh (forty-four miles apart) together by a public service so early as 1678, when Provost Campbell and the magistrates of Glasgow agreed with William Hoorn, of Edinburgh, for a coach to go on that road once a week: “a sufficient strong coach, drawn by sax able horses, whilk coach sall contine sax persons and sall go ance ilk week, to leave Edinburgh ilk Monday morning, and to return again (God willing) ilk Saturday night.” To travel those forty-four miles was, therefore, the occupation of three days. Even thus early we see the beginnings of that spirit of municipal enterprise which has in modern times carried Glasgow so far. Now the local tramway, water, gas, and electric lighting authority, she, so early as the seventeenth century, essayed a public service of coaches. Like much else in early coaching history, this is merely a fragment; but again, in 1743, Glasgow is found returning to the question, in an attempt of the Town Council to set up a stage-coach or “lando,” to go once a week in winter and twice in summer. The attempt failed, and it was not until 1749 that the first conveyance to ply regularly between Glasgow and Edinburgh was established. This was the “Caravan,” which made the passage in two days each way. It was succeeded in 1759 by the “Fly,” which brought the time down to a day and a half. In 1697, according to an entry in the diary of Sir William Dugdale, under date of July 16th, a London and Birmingham coach, by way of Banbury, was then running; but such isolated references are quite obscured by the flood of light thrown upon coaching by the work of De Laune, _The Present State of London_, dated 1681. In his pages is to be found a complete list of all the stage-coaches, carriers, and waggons to and from London in that year. The carriers and waggons are very numerous, and there are in all 119 coaches, of which number between sixty and seventy are long-distance conveyances, the remainder serving places up to twenty or twenty-five miles from London. In that list we find that, although a marvellous expansion of coaching had taken place, some of the places already catered for in 1658 are abandoned. The Edinburgh stage does not appear, and nothing is to be found on that road farther north than York. The reason for the omission was, doubtless, that York, then relatively a more important place than now, had its own well-organised coaching businesses. Travellers from London for Edinburgh would secure a place to York, and, arriving there, book again by a York and Edinburgh coach. The Edinburgh stage from London, once a fortnight, is, indeed, not heard of again until 1734.