We left the salt to the care of the Weaver, which was duly bearing it on, white blocks, ruddy lumps, rock-salt and table-salt, to Runcorn and to Liverpool. We put the brine-pits out of mind, and enjoyed the lovely fresh-water meres, social resorts of the most amiable of ducks and the most dignified of geese, which dot the Cheshire landscape. We had visited Rostherne Mere on our way out, and caught a glint from the fallen church-bell which a Mermaid rings over those dim waters every Easter dawn. We paused at Lower Peover for a glimpse of its black-and-white timbered church, deeply impressive and almost unique as an architectural survival. Among its curiosities we saw a chest hollowed out of solid oak with an inscription to the effect that any girl who can raise the lid with one arm is strong enough to be a Cheshire farmer's wife. Sturdy arms they needs must have, these Cheshire women, for the valley of the Weaver, like the more southerly Vale of Dee, is largely given up to dairy farms and to the production of cheeses. A popular song betrays the county pride: "A Cheshire man went o'er to Spain To trade in merchandise, And when arrived across the main A Spaniard there he spies. "'Thou Cheshire man,' quoth he, 'look here,-- These fruits and spices fine. Our country yields these twice a year; Thou hast not such in thine.' "The Cheshire man soon sought the hold, Then brought a Cheshire cheese. 'You Spanish dog, look here!' said he. 'You have not such as these.' "'Your land produces twice a year Spices and fruits, you say, But such as in my hand I bear. Our land yields twice a day.'" But the best songs of Cheshire go to the music of the river Dee. We have all had our moments of envying its heart-free Miller. "There was a jolly Miller once Lived on the river Dee; He worked and sang from morn till night, No lark more blithe than he; And this the burden of his song Forever used to be: _I care for nobody, no, not I, And nobody cares for me_." Kingsley's tragic lyric of "Mary, go and call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee," reports too truly the perils of that wide estuary where Lycidas was lost. On the corresponding estuary of the Mersey stands Birkenhead, the bustling modern port of Cheshire; but it was at Chester that Milton's college mate had embarked for another haven than the one he reached.