The railway proper doubtless originated in the coal districts of the North of England and Wales, where it was found useful in facilitating the transport of coals from the pits to the shipping-places. At an early period the coal was carried to the boats in panniers, or in sacks upon horses' backs. Next carts were used, and tram-ways of flag-stone were laid down, along which they were easily hauled. The carts were then converted into wagons, and mounted on four wheels instead of two. Still farther to facilitate the haulage of the wagons, pieces of planking were laid parallel upon wooden sleepers, or imbedded in the ordinary track. It is said that these wooden rails were first employed by a Mr. Beaumont, a gentleman from the South, who, about the year 1630, adventured in the northern mines with about thirty thousand pounds, and after introducing many improvements in the working of the coal, as well as in the methods of transporting it to the staithes on the river, was ruined by his enterprise, and "within a few Years," to use the words of the ancient chronicler, "he consumed all his Money, and rode Home upon his light Horse."[3] [Illustration: COAL-STAITH ON THE TYNE. [By R. P. Leitch.]] The use of wooden rails gradually extended, and they were laid down between most of the collieries on the Tyne and the places at which the coal was shipped. Roger North, in 1676, found the practice had become extensively adopted, and he speaks of the large sums then paid for way-leave--that is, the permission granted by the owners of lands lying between the coal-pits and the river-side to lay down a tram-way for the purpose of connecting the one with the other. A century later, Arthur Young observed that not only had these roads become greatly multiplied, but formidable works had been constructed to carry them along upon the same level. "The coal wagon-roads from the pits to the water," he says, "are great works, carried over all sorts of inequalities of ground, so far as the distance of nine or ten miles. The tracks of the wheels are marked with pieces of wood let into the road for the wheels of the wagons to run on, by which one horse is enabled to draw, and that with ease, fifty or sixty bushels of coals."[4] Saint Fond, the French traveler, who visited Newcastle in 1791, described the colliery wagon-ways in that neighborhood as superior to any thing of the kind he had seen. The wooden rails were formed with a rounded upper surface, like a projecting moulding, and the wagon-wheels being "made of cast iron, and hollowed in the manner of a metal pulley," readily fitted the rounded surface of the rails. The economy with which the coal was thus hauled to the shipping-places was urged by Saint Fond as an inducement to his own countrymen to adopt a like method of transit.[5]