The Post Office and Its Story. Edward Bennett
rests until the following morning, when a foot-postman starts for the shore station of the Muckle Flugga Lighthouse. But it may be here for weeks before the people on the shore can communicate with those on the lighthouse. The British Isles in these northern latitudes end in magnificent and dangerous rocks, and it is upon one of these, rising to a height of 200 feet, that the Muckle Flugga lighthouse is erected.
The letter has travelled practically the length of the British Isles from south to north, and in less than the same time another letter might have travelled from London to Athens, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Madeira or Tangiers. The Mauretania will probably reach New York on most of her voyages sooner than a passenger will travel the length of the British Isles. And that is simply because we use the old means of conveyance over a considerable portion of the distance. The Post Office owes much to the railway companies for the advances made in the quality of the rolling stock and in the condition of the permanent way. It was always possible to sort letters after a fashion while the train was in motion. But it is now possible to write and to type letters on the train, and we have come to this, that all the stages of a letter can be completed during a single journey. Yet directly we get away from the railway system in any part of the country we are back again in the eighteenth century, dependent on postboys, mail carts, the weather, and the state of the roads. The country is still full of samples of the travelling arrangements of all the centuries. There is no Travelling Post Office in the Hebrides or the Shetlands.
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