But the commercial spirit has seized historic Lancaster, and factories of various kinds thrust their chimneys into the sky. Oilcloth-making by hand was started in a small way many years ago, in an old shed rented by a journeyman house-painter, Williamson by name. The enterprise quickly prospered and grew into a wealth-producing wholesale business. The journeyman painter’s son is now Baron Ashton, much to the dissatisfaction of many jealous folk who gave his father a job in the days of small things. It is a romance of industry, and has helped to change the appearance of Lancaster, the quiet, grave country-town of yore. There was until recent years a bleak and barren upland known as Lancaster Moor, overlooking the town: it is now transformed, with trees and shrubs, as the “Williamson Park.” A huge new Town Hall is also a Williamson product, and overlooking all Lancaster and dwarfing the importance of the old castle itself, a mammoth bugbear of a thing called the “Ashton Memorial” arrests the eye from far and near, like a St. Paul’s dome on the hilltop. Entering Lancaster from the north, you can no more miss seeing it than you could miss seeing St. Paul’s from Ludgate Hill. American tourists ask, in their picturesque way, “Who in thunder built it?” and they are told that it is built to the honour and glory of the Williamson family. It arouses terrible thoughts of what may yet be in store for the historic places of Old England, when each ennobled maker of wall-papers, drain-pipes, and the like shall feel that the merits of his race demand advertising as prominently as his wares. XVI The suburb of Skerton, on the north side of Skerton Bridge, leads to the hamlet of Slyne, perched on a hill overlooking Morecambe Bay. The place-name “Slyne” looks as unpleasant in print as do the personal names of Silas, Matthias, or Jabez, and the meaning of it, as of the similar place-names “Slindon” and “Slinfold,” in Sussex, seems to have escaped research. A quaint old manor-house, now a farm, with an odd doorway inscribed G C M 1681, stands facing the road, and with the old “Cross Keys” inn, dated 1727, comprises nearly all there is of Slyne. Here comes the left-hand turning to Hest Bank, on the shore of Morecambe Bay, whence old travellers, greatly daring, took a short cut across the treacherous quicksands at low water, to Grange and Cartmel, instead of going the roundabout way of Carnforth and Milnthorpe. Lancashire is here cleft into two separate and distinct portions, Lonsdale south of the sands, and Lonsdale north; a great wedge of Westmorland coming in between. [Illustration: MAP OF THE “OVER-SANDS” ROUTE.] [Sidenote: _LAKELAND_]