Opening the text

The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland:: A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.Silloway, Thomas W. (Thomas William)

History

The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland:: A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.

Name: The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland:: A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.
Author: Silloway, Thomas W. (Thomas William)

Silloway, Thomas W. (Thomas William)

Great Britain -- Description and travel

At 4 P. M. we took a train for another great workshop, and on
our way must needs go through, not Samaria, but Staffordshire, which is
one of the best examples of a _smoke district_; and--like Niagara in
this--that one is enough for a world.


STAFFORDSHIRE.

In this region the smelting and manufacture of iron abounds. Hundreds
of chimneys, large and small, single and in groups, begin to meet the
view as soon as we are fairly out of Stoke Village. Everywhere the air
is permeated with dense though by no means very disagreeable smoke;
that is, it did not produce half the ill effect on the eyes or the body
that it did on the shirt bosoms and the mind.

The vast extent of the domain astonished us. As we merged into
the thicker part, the sun was entirely obscured, the people were
weird-like, and all things wore a smoky aspect. Condensed masses of
smoke hung like thunder-clouds, and they were lighted up by the glare
that issued Pandemonium-like from a hundred chimney-tops. In the
dimness below, the men at the blastfurnaces, handling red-hot rods, or
pouring molten iron into moulds, seemed like so many imps, and we had a
vivid representation of the _other place_, that was talked of a hundred
years ago. We were glad of the experience, for it was unlike anything
seen before, or likely to be seen again; but how we enjoyed a change to
clear atmosphere and a blue sky, and how increased was our ability to
enjoy the

  "Sweet fields of living green,
  And rivers of delight,"

by which the swift train presently hustled us!

We need not say that bituminous and not anthracite coal is used in
England. It burns with a brilliant red flame, and its smoke is either
black, gray, or white. It is found in great profusion (as hard coal is
in our Pennsylvania) in the same regions with iron ore.

It is as common to see coal-mine openings--their cheap houses over
them, and their railways,--as to see iron mines. No manufacturing
region would seem complete without them. It is providential that
these two useful minerals, coal and iron, are found together, and so
conveniently near the geographical centre of Great Britain as to make
them accessible to each section of the island.

We are at our journey's end, in


MANCHESTER,

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland:: A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.Silloway, Thomas W. (Thomas William)

History

The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland:: A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.

Silloway, Thomas W. (Thomas William)

Great Britain -- Description and travel

At 4 P. M. we took a train for another great workshop, and on
our way must needs go through, not Samaria, but Staffordshire, which is
one of the best examples of a _smoke district_; and--like Niagara in
this--that one is enough for a world.


STAFFORDSHIRE.

In this region the smelting and manufacture of iron abounds. Hundreds
of chimneys, large and small, single and in groups, begin to meet the
view as soon as we are fairly out of Stoke Village. Everywhere the air
is permeated with dense though by no means very disagreeable smoke;
that is, it did not produce half the ill effect on the eyes or the body
that it did on the shirt bosoms and the mind.

The vast extent of the domain astonished us. As we merged into
the thicker part, the sun was entirely obscured, the people were
weird-like, and all things wore a smoky aspect. Condensed masses of
smoke hung like thunder-clouds, and they were lighted up by the glare
that issued Pandemonium-like from a hundred chimney-tops. In the
dimness below, the men at the blastfurnaces, handling red-hot rods, or
pouring molten iron into moulds, seemed like so many imps, and we had a
vivid representation of the _other place_, that was talked of a hundred
years ago. We were glad of the experience, for it was unlike anything
seen before, or likely to be seen again; but how we enjoyed a change to
clear atmosphere and a blue sky, and how increased was our ability to
enjoy the

  "Sweet fields of living green,
  And rivers of delight,"

by which the swift train presently hustled us!

We need not say that bituminous and not anthracite coal is used in
England. It burns with a brilliant red flame, and its smoke is either
black, gray, or white. It is found in great profusion (as hard coal is
in our Pennsylvania) in the same regions with iron ore.

It is as common to see coal-mine openings--their cheap houses over
them, and their railways,--as to see iron mines. No manufacturing
region would seem complete without them. It is providential that
these two useful minerals, coal and iron, are found together, and so
conveniently near the geographical centre of Great Britain as to make
them accessible to each section of the island.

We are at our journey's end, in


MANCHESTER,

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland:: A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.

The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland:: A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.

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