several creeks and inlets which were being made of considerable use by the smugglers for landing their goods.  Especially was this the case up the river Tamar, and all this had been and was still “to the great prejudice of the fair traders and merchants.”  They pointed out that a great deal of it consisted of clandestine running from ships in the Sound, Hamoaze, and other anchorages round about there.  Large quantities of French linings, wines, and brandies were being run ashore with impunity and speedily sold in the adjacent towns or conveyed some distance into Devonshire.  The mayor therefore begged the Treasury for three additional Custom officers consisting of an inspector of roads and two tide-waiters to be established at Saltash, but the Treasury could not see their way to grant such a request.

But in other parts of the country the roads were kept carefully watched to prevent goods being brought inland.  The coaches which ran from Dover to London with passengers who had come across from the Continent were frequently stopped on the highway by the riding-officers and the passengers searched.  Harsh as this mode of procedure may seem to us to-day, yet it was rendered necessary by the fact that a good many professional carriers of contraband goods were wont to travel backwards and forwards between England and abroad.  Some years later, for example, when the Dover coach was stopped at “The Half-Way House,” a foreigner, who was travelling by this conveyance and had been able to evade the Customs’ search at Dover, was found to be carrying two gold snuff-boxes set with diamonds, four lockets also set with diamonds, eighteen opals, three sapphires, eight amethysts, six emeralds, two topazes, and one thousand two hundred torquoises—­all of which were liable to duty.

And thus the illegal practices continued all round the coast.  From Devonshire it was reported that smuggling was on the increase—­this was in the autumn of 1759—­and that large gangs armed with loaded clubs openly made runs of goods on the shore, the favourite locale being Torbay, though previously the neighbourhood of Lyme had been the usual aim of these men who had sailed as a rule from Guernsey.  All that the Collector could suggest was that an “impress smack” should be sent to that district, as he promised that the notorious offenders would make excellent seamen.

There was an interesting incident also off the north-east coast of England, where matters were still about as bad as ever.  We referred some pages back to the capture of a Dutch dogger off the Isle of Man; we shall now see another of these craft seized in the North Sea.  Captain Bowen of the sloop Prince of Wales, hearing that the dogger Young Daniel was running brandy on the coast near to Newcastle, put to sea in search of her.  He came up with a number of those cobbles—­open boats—­which are peculiar to the north-east coastline, though at one time they were used as far south as Great Yarmouth.