The Old Coach Days.

Reading the other day a recently published book on the old Cobb and Co. coaching enterprises in Otago and Southland I was impelled to hope that some assiduous collection of data about this phase of our pioneer days will extend the record to Canterbury and Westland and more northern parts. We owed a great deal of the pleasure and safety of travel across and around about the provinces to the well-horsed, well-driven stage coach. One remembers the excellence of Cassidy's coaches on the Otira-Arthur's Pass route, when the railheads were stili fifty or sixty miles from each other. How splendidly those drivers handled their page 42 teams, three in the lead and two on the pole! How smoothly they swept round those seemingly break-neck corners, with what easy swiftness they took the narrow shelf of highway, with the torrent tearing in foam over its rocks far below! They carried thousands of passengers, fair weather and foul, with scarcely ever an accident. “Travel by mail-coach for safety” might well have been said of the old horse-vehicle era, just as you can say it of the railways to-day. One cannot recall anyone boasting that of the motorcars!