in addition to the conveyance of despatches
and travellers was added the supervision of all the authorities in
outlying possessions. Of the two classes of superior postal officers,
the _nowaqquium_ was the postmaster who received the postal packets and
letters and attended to their conveyance, whereas the _farwaneqqyun_ was
a kind of chief postmaster at the capital of a province, who controlled
the work of the postmasters and made his own report on all the civil and
military authorities to the central office in Bagdad. These reports
were so valuable that Calif Abu Djafar Manssur is credited with the
statement: 'My throne rests on four pillars, and my power on four men--a
blameless kazi (judge), an energetic chief of police, an honest minister
of finance, and a faithful postmaster who gives me reliable information
on everything.' It has been said that the Roman _cursus publicus_, the
_frumentarii_, the _agentes in rebus_, and the _curiosi_ served a
similar purpose, but the Arabian arrangement was more systematic. In the
Post Office of the Califs the letters and packets posted, as well as
those received from other places, were entered in special lists, where
their number and address had to be stated. This practice was observed in
India till a few years ago, and it will thus be seen that the letter
bill of the modern posts was in use already among the Egyptians in 270
B.C., and also among the Arabs. From the information that has been
preserved, it is inferred that the Arabian posts did, to a certain
extent, transmit private letters, but this was not done officially, and
the couriers and postmasters conveyed such correspondence, along with
the official despatches, on their own account."--I. G. J. Hamilton,
_Outline of Postal History_, Calcutta, 1910, p. 4.

_Mexico_.

"Communication was maintained with the remotest parts of the country by
means of couriers. Post-houses were established on the great roads,
about two leagues distant from each other. The courier, bearing his
despatches in the form of a hieroglyphical painting, ran with them to
the first station, where they were taken by another messenger and
carried forward to the next; and so on till they reached the capital.
These couriers, trained from childhood, travelled with incredible
swiftness--not four or five leagues an hour, as an old chronicler would
make us believe, but with such speed that despatches were carried from
one to two hundred miles a day. Fresh fish