The situation of these towns is often pleasing enough: sometimes it is picturesque, and even romantic. Having begun in simple homesteads, pitched where comfort and safety seemed best assured, they are often found upon gentle eminences, the crests of which, as at Oldham, they now overlap; others, like Stalybridge, lie in deep hollows, or, like Blackburn, have gradually spread from the margin of a stream. Not a few of these primitive sites have the ancient character pleasingly commemorated in their names, as Haslingden, the "place of hazel-nuts." The eastern border of the county being characterised by lofty and rocky hills, the localities of the towns and villages are there often really favoured in regard to scenery. This also gives great interest to the approaches, as when, after leaving Todmorden, we move through the sinuous gorge that, bordered by Cliviger, "mother of rocks," leads on to Burnley. The higher grounds are bleak and sterile, but the warmth and fertility of the valleys make amends. In any case, there is never any lack of the beauty which comes of the impregnation of wild nature with the outcome of human intelligence. Manchester itself occupies part of a broad level, usually clay-floored, and with peat-mosses touching the frontiers. In the bygones nothing was sooner found than standing water: the world probably never contained a town that only thirty to a hundred years ago possessed so many ponds, many of them still in easy recollection, to say nothing of as many more within the compass of an afternoon's walk.