The danger, however, from footpads and highwaymen was not greatest in remote country places, but in and about the metropolis itself. The proprietors of Bellsize House and gardens, in the Hampstead-road, then one of the principal places of amusement, had the way to London patrolled during the season by twelve "lusty fellows;" and Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh advertised similar advantages. Foot passengers proceeding towards Kensington and Paddington in the evening, would wait until a sufficiently numerous band had collected to set footpads at defiance, and then they started in company at known intervals, of which a bell gave due warning. Carriages were stopped in broad daylight in Hyde Park, and even in Piccadilly itself, and pistols presented at the breasts of fashionable people, who were called upon to deliver up their purses. Horace Walpole relates a number of curious instances of this sort, he himself having been robbed in broad day, with Lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Lady Albemarle, and many more. A curious robbery of the Portsmouth mail, in 1757, illustrates the imperfect postal communication of the period. The boy who carried the post had dismounted at Hammersmith, about three miles from Hyde Park Corner, and called for beer, when some thieves took the opportunity of cutting the mail-bag from off the horse's crupper and got away undiscovered! The means adopted for the transport of merchandise were as tedious and difficult as those ordinarily employed for the conveyance of passengers. Corn and wool were sent to market on horses' backs,*[18] manure was carried to the fields in panniers, and fuel was conveyed from the moss or the forest in the same way. During the winter months, the markets were inaccessible; and while in some localities the supplies of food were distressingly deficient, in others the superabundance actually rotted from the impossibility of consuming it or of transporting it to places where it was needed. The little coal used in the southern counties was principally sea-borne, though pack-horses occasionally carried coal inland for the supply of the blacksmiths' forges. When Wollaton Hall was built by John of Padua for Sir Francis Willoughby in 1580, the stone was all brought on horses' backs from Ancaster, in Lincolnshire, thirty-five miles distant, and they loaded back with coal, which was taken in exchange for the stone. [Image] The Pack-horse Convoy