In 1838 there were 59 four-horse mails in England and Wales, 16 in Scotland, and 29 in Ireland, in addition to a total number of 70 pair-horse: some 180 mails in all. It was in this year that--the novelty of railways creating a desire for fast travelling--the Post Office yielded to the cry for speed, and, abandoning the usual conservative attitude, went too far in the other direction, overstepping the bounds of common safety. For some time the mails between Glasgow and Carlisle, and Carlisle and Edinburgh were run to clear 11 miles an hour, which meant an average pace of 13 miles an hour. These were popularly called the “calico mails,” because of their lightness. The time allowed between Carlisle and Glasgow, 96 miles, was 8 hours 32 minutes, and it was a sight to see it come down Stanwix Brow on a summer evening. It met, however, with so many accidents that cautious folk always avoided it, preferring the orthodox 10 miles an hour--especially by lamplight in the rugged Cheviots. Even at that pace there had been more than enough risk, as these incidents from Post Office records of three years earlier clearly show:-- _1835._ February 5. Edinburgh and Aberdeen Mail overturned. 9. Devonport Mail overturned. 10. Scarborough and York Mail overturned. 16. Belfast and Enniskillen Mail overturned. 16. Dublin and Derry Mail overturned. 17. Scarborough and Hull Mail overturned. 17. York and Doncaster Mail overturned. 20. Thirty-five mail-horses burnt alive at Reading. 24. Louth Mail overturned. 25. Gloucester Mail overturned. No place was better served by the Post Office than Exeter in the last years of the road, and few so well. Before 1837 it had no fewer than three mails, and in that year a fourth was added. All four started simultaneously from the General Post Office, and reached the Queen City of the West within a few hours of one another every day. On its own merits, Exeter did not deserve or need all these travelling and postal facilities, and it was only because it stood at the converging-point of many routes that it obtained them. Only one mail, indeed, was dedicated especially to Exeter, and that was the last-established, the “New Exeter,” put on the road in 1837. The others continued to Devonport or to Falmouth, then a port, a mail-packet and naval station of great prominence, where the West Indian mails landed, and whence they were shipped. To the mail-coaches making for Devonport and Falmouth, Exeter was, therefore, only an incident. [Illustration: THE “QUICKSILVER” DEVONPORT MAIL, PASSING KEW BRIDGE. _After J. Pollard._ ]