In the next year the Chamber learnt with satisfaction that the direct Liverpool mail through Chepstow, Monmouth, Hereford, Shrewsbury and Chester, which was started as an experiment, had been continued, to the decided advantage of the public, particularly to all connected with the line of country through which it passed. As compared with the former route, the saving of time was equal to one day; the rate of postage was likewise reduced. The starting and arriving were at the most convenient hours the distance and circumstances, with reference to the passage of the two rivers, Severn and Medway, would permit. The coach had to run over the flat parts of the ground at a great pace, to make up for time lost at the hills. The contract time was 9 miles 2 furlongs in the hour. One of the chief mail coaches in the kingdom in 1837 was the Bristol, Carmarthen and Milford (150 miles _viâ_ Passage, one hour allowed for ferry), Cardiff and Swansea. Its down journey occupied 19 hours 38 minutes, and its up journey 20 hours. The Liverpool and Milford mails were conveyed across the Severn at Aust Passage, where the ferry had been located since the Lord Protector's time. A moderate expenditure on the piers at Aust Passage, though little regarded by the citizens at the time the work was in progress, with the introduction there of a steam vessel, was one of the principal means of bringing about the establishment of the additional communication with the districts over the Severn, the uncertainty and inconvenience of crossing its estuary being then to a large extent removed. Mr. Oliver Norris, now nearly 80 years of age, and who has lived in the district adjoining the Severn Tunnel from his boyhood, can call to mind the time when the Liverpool and Milford coaches were running. They had to make their way from Pilning through Northwick, up to the Old Passage at Aust, and in rough weather the passengers must have had a cold ride on the bleak river banks over which they had to journey. When the Bristol and South Wales Railway was opened in 1863, the Aust Passage was abandoned, and the ferry steamers commenced to cross from the revived New (or Pilning) Passage, to connect with the new train services at Portskewet. When the penny post was introduced, Mr. Morris says that as the coaches passed through the villages the inhabitants in his district adopted a primitive way of posting their letters, which was to place the letter and penny in a cleft stick, and so hand up to the mail guard as the coach was driven by, and who, if the penny was not forthcoming, promptly threw the letter to the ground.