The greatest figure in the coaching world up north was Teather, who was principal contractor for mails and stage-coaches in all that lengthy territory of 166 miles between Lancaster and Glasgow. The careers of the Teathers reflect the fortunes of the road. John Teather, the father, was originally landlord of the “Royal Oak,” Keswick, which does not stand on the main route to the north; but he left the comparative obscurity of that Lakeland town for the bustling activities of Carlisle, and from that strategic coaching position worked the coaches sixty-five miles south to Lancaster, and 101 miles north, to Glasgow. Eight mails entered and left Carlisle daily, and seven stage-coaches; and eighty horses were kept for the proper working of them. Teather and his son managed this important business: the younger succeeding to it in 1837 and, in the general wreck brought about by railway extension, living to end where his father had begun, as landlord of the “Royal Oak” at Keswick. With the coming of the nineteenth century, some steps were taken to make Carlisle a port. It was thought that a ship-canal from a place called Fisher’s Cross on the Solway, to Carlisle, a distance of twelve miles, would make the ancient city a place of commercial importance; and accordingly the canal was cut, 1819-23, at a cost of £90,000, and Fisher’s Cross was dignified by the new name of “Port Carlisle.” The enterprise never paid its way, any steps that might in after years have been taken to improve the position being rendered impossible by the coming of railways; while the irony of fate long ago overtook the canal, in its conversion into a railway. It was in December 1846 that the first railway ran into Carlisle from the south. This was the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway, long since absorbed into the London and North-Western. In September 1847 the Caledonian Railway, from Carlisle to Moffat, carried on the new methods another stage, and in the following February it was further extended to Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was necessarily the death-blow of the coaches along the main route. My old friend, Mr. W. H. Duignan, of Walsall, who remembers that time, travelled from Carlisle to Glasgow by the last mail-coach. He went to the “Bush” hotel and booked a seat for the occasion. The bookkeeper remarked, when he gave his name, “I think I have often booked you before, sir, have I not?” “Yes,” the traveller replied. “Then, sir,” rejoined the clerk, refusing the money, “Mr.——”—mentioning the name of the hotel-keeper—“will feel it a pleasure if you will accept a seat, and order anything you please, at his expense.” My friend declared that was the most gentlemanly-dying mail he ever knew.