The earlier and simpler machines, such as the spinning-wheel and the hand-loom, were worked by hand. But the new discoveries made it possible for one wheel to turn eighty or a hundred spindles at once by means of horse-power or a water-wheel, and the hand-loom similarly gave place to a power-loom. But in remote villages the old-fashioned methods survived, and even to this day you may still occasionally see a hand-loom at work in cottages in the highlands of East Cheshire. Then great factories began to be built, huge buildings of brick and of many stories, chiefly on the banks of Cheshire streams, or on the canals, by which the raw cotton could be brought in barges to the very doors. You may look down from the churchyard of Mottram into the valley beneath and count a score of them. Steam was applied, and the whole of the machinery of the factories was driven by this new force. Great towns sprang up like mushrooms. Hyde and Stalybridge and Dukinfield, from being tiny villages, soon became great busy hives of the cotton industry. The cotton had also to be bleached and the calicoes printed, and mills for the purpose were built along the streams, whose waters provided the steam-power which worked the machinery of the mills. From Taxal to Stockport, along the banks of the now polluted Goyt, is an almost continuous line of great mills, the bleach-works of Whaley Bridge, the print-works of Furness Vale and Strines, the cotton-mills of Disley, Marple, and Mellor. The Mellor mills were built as early as 1790 by Samuel Oldknow, and were at one time in the hands of Peter Arkwright, who was one of a famous family of inventors, and who made many changes in the machinery of his works. Thus the positions of modern manufacturing towns have not been chosen, as were those of the towns of the Middle Ages, by their ability to beat off the attacks of enemies. For war is no longer the principal business of the inhabitants of Cheshire. The 'cotton' towns have come into being just in those parts where the conditions are favourable to the cotton industry. In the first place the climate is damp, owing to the nearness of the Pennine hills, on which the wet winds from the south-west drop their moisture; and cotton can only be spun and woven in such a climate, for a dry climate would make the threads break. Secondly, there is a plentiful water-supply from the numerous streams that flow from the hills, and lastly, the towns are close to big coal-fields from which they may obtain the fuel for the engines that work the machinery of the mills.