The irregularly-shaped district of Lancashire partly cut off from the remainder of the county by an arm of the Irish Sea is known as Furness. It is a wild and rugged region, best known from the famous Furness Abbey and its port of Barrow-in-Furness, one of the most remarkable examples in England of quick city growth. Forty years ago this was an insignificant fishing village; now Barrow has magnificent docks and a fine harbor protected by the natural breakwater of Walney Island, great iron-foundries and the largest jute-manufactory in the world; while it has recently also became a favorite port for iron shipbuilding. About two miles distant, and in a romantic glen called the Valley of Deadly Nightshade, not far from the sea, is one of the finest examples of mediaeval church-architecture in England, the ruins of Furness Abbey, founded in the twelfth century by King Stephen and Maud, his queen. It was a splendid abbey, standing high in rank and power, its income in the reign of Edward I. being $90,000 a year, an enormous sum for that early day. The ruins are in fine preservation, and effigies of Stephen and Maud are on each side of the great east window. For twelve reigns the charters of sovereigns and bulls of popes confirmed the abbots of Furness in their extraordinary powers, which extended over the district of Furness, while the situation of the abbey made them military chieftains, and they erected a watch-tower on a high hill, from which signals alarmed the coast on the approach of an enemy. The church is three hundred and four feet long, and from the centre rose a tower, three of the massive supporting pillars of which remain, but the tower has fallen and lies a mass of rubbish; the stained glass from the great east window having been removed to Bowness Church, in Westmorelandshire. The abbey enclosure, covering eighty-five acres, was surrounded by a wall, the ruins of which are now covered with thick foliage. This renowned abbey was surrendered and dismantled in Henry VIII.'s reign; the present hotel near the ruins was formerly the abbot's residence. The river Ribble, which flows into the Irish Sea through a wide estuary, drains the western slopes of the Pennine Hills, which divide Lancashire from Yorkshire. Up in the north-western portion of Lancashire, near the bases of these hills, is a moist region known as the parish of Mitton, where, as the poet tells us, "The Hodder, the Calder, Ribble, and rain All meet together in Mitton domain."