Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

92 BRITAIN AT WORK. as, in consequence of the remoteness of the group, serious delay would ensue if any were mis-sent Then they are tied in separate bundles, and are placed in not an ordinary mail bag but a strong water- proof sack, labelled “ Aberdeen to Lerwick,” and at 1.45 the same day (Monday) the bag is conveyed to the mail steamer, which starts at 2 p.m. for Scalloway, on the west side of Shetland, where it arrives about 2 p.m. on Tuesday. The mails are removed from the vessel, and placed on a mail coach, for conveyance to Lerwick, on the east side of the island, which at this point is six miles wide. Our bag is opened at Lerwick, and once more the Shetland letter undergoes the process of sub-sorting. It is stamped, and placed in another bag, labelled “ Lerwick to Haroldswick,” in the island of Unst. The bag is conveyed by the Lerwick and Moss- bank mail car, leaving Lerwick at 9.15 p.m. Tuesday. I he Shetland Isles are seventy- three miles from north to south, and this stage means a long drive with a break of a few hours at Voe. Mossbank, which is on Yell Sound, the dangerous channel that separates the island of Yell from the Shetland mainland, is reached at 7.30 a.m. on Wednesday. Here the bag for Harolds- wick is put on a ferry boat, which starts at 8 a.m., and is due to reach the other side in an hour, the distance being three miles. But the tide in Yell Sound has a speed of nine miles an hour, and, in a gale of wind, is the terror of seamen. Ulsta is the landing- place on the other side, and we are now in the island of Yell. A mail car takes our letter five and a half miles to Buna- voe, and another car from there to Cullivoe, twenty miles further on, and the letter is opposite the island of Unst at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. The ferryman who plies be- tween the islands of Yell and Unst, across a channel one mile in width, takes charge of the letter, and he should arrive at Tranavoe, in Unst, about 3.30 p.m. There a mail car awaits to carry the letter eleven and a half miles across the island of Unst, and it arrives at Harolds- wick at 6.30 p.m. the same day. And the last stage of the letter arrives when the following morning a foot postman starts for the shore station of the Muckle- Flagga Lighthouse, where he delivers the packet. But here it may lie for weeks before the people on the shore can com- municate with those in the lighthouse. The British Isles in these northern latitudes end in grand and dangerous rocks, and it is upon one of these, rising to a height of two hundred feet, that the Muckle-Flagga Lighthouse is erected, the real Ultima Thule of North Britain. In order to observe more closely another department of Post Office work, let us get back to London. Travelling post offices, in which postal work is conducted in trains which are in motion, run every night from Euston Square to Aberdeen and Holy head, from Paddington to Penzance, from Waterloo to Southampton and Dorchester, from Bristol to Newcastle, and in Ireland between Dublin and Belfast and Dublin and Cork. At different points on the route of each train are erected standards and nets for the