I suppose the original signpost was simply a board stuck
up on a post, so as to be out of the reach of boys, with a place-name on it. "To Erewhon," it said, or perhaps just "Erewhon." There were few main roads, and on them milestones recorded the distances between the towns which the roads connected. The assumption was that not many people travelled outside districts with which they were familiar, and that those who did needed only the minimal aids to navigation. Once the horseless carriage got established this assumption ceased to be valid, and the signpost set out to answer that question which is never far from the traveller's lips, whether he is traversing Mongolia or touring in Cheshire. "Erewhont 43," said the signpost, or "Dunsinane, 23." At some imprecise stage before the last war this helpful practice was largely abandoned, presumably because it was thought that distance had ceased to be an object to anyone. Signposts were lowered, so that they came into the trajectory of our headlights, and we no longer had to shin up them at night, striking fusees ; but they ceased to tell us the one thing which motorists nowadays want to know more than—and cyclists and pedestrians at least as much as—ever, namely, how far it is to Erewhon. I always used to think that there was an element of bathos in the legend—" Welwyn and the North "—which greeted one when one set out for Scotland about this time of year; but that did at least tell the traveller something about the road he was on, in addition to the name of the next place on it.
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