Passing through Pendlebury, with the old Duke of Bridgewater’s collieries of Worsley away to the left, we plunge into the district of coal-pits at Clifton, where the hoisting-gear of the Clifton Hall Colliery, the marshalled coal-waggons, the rails across the road, and the spoil-banks where starved vegetation takes a precarious hold, make a desolation beside the way. On the left are the sullen moors, with perhaps a solitary cow grazing in one of the few remaining fields, just to emphasise the change that has come over the scene; while on the right, far down, flows the Irwell, amid a curious medley of beautiful country, ancient halls and manor-houses, and innumerable collieries and mills whose chimney-stacks spout smoke and steam over all the valley. When a steady rain comes down, on windless days, and diffuses the mingled steam and smoke over the landscape in a grey, woolly mass of vapour, the scene is weird in the extreme; while a wet day at Kearsley or Farnworth, places of grey houses and drab shops, is a desolation in which even the public-houses that have superseded the inns fail to radiate a meretricious cheerfulness. [Sidenote: _MOSES GATE_] Moses Gate, now a kind of succursal to Bolton, and with a railway station of its own, was once a toll-gate on the turnpike road. Who was Moses, except perhaps the pikeman, I do not know, nor does any one locally evince the least curiosity. The name is accepted as a matter of course, together with the unlovely circumstances; but railway passengers passing to more favoured places are as a rule extremely amused by it. Bolton was formerly surrounded by “dreary and inhospitable” moors, but the stranger may doubt their ever being as dreary as the present surroundings of the great black, squalid, and unbeautiful town. In the very far-off days when those surrounding moors first saw this settlement, it was “Bothelton,” from the word “Botl,” which means a homestead. There are several “botl,” “bothal” and “bottle” prefixes or terminations of place-names in these northern counties: notably Walbottle, near Newcastle, situated on the Roman wall; and “Bothel” occurs near Morpeth and in the neighbourhood of Keswick. “Bootle” has a similar origin. At last the name became worn down to Bolton: “Bolton-le-Moors,” to distinguish it from Bolton-le-Sands, on Morecambe Bay; but it is many a long year since this distinguishing mark was last used. [Illustration: THE “OLD MAN AND SCYTHE.”] [Sidenote: _END OF THE EARL OF DERBY_]