A little below this place the Tyne is joined by a muddy little brook, known as Hedwin Streams. Here, as it is contended, the jurisdiction of Newcastle begins. From time immemorial--legally defined, I believe, as a period which came to an end with King Richard's return from Palestine--the mayor and citizens of Newcastle have claimed a property in the bed of the river Tyne from Spar Hawk, within the Tyne Piers, to Hedwin Streams here at Newburn, and the claim is still asserted once in five years; when, on what is known as "barge day," the Newcastle Corporation proceeds up and down the river in a series of gaily decorated steamboats, on board which high revel is held. And near Newburn, indeed, Newcastle may be said really to begin. It is five miles to where the city is blackening the atmosphere and dimming the sky with its smoke, but here are clearly discernible the fringes of its dusky robe. To our right, as we pass downward, lies the village of Blaydon. Prosaic Scotswood is on the left, and beyond it are the vast, mile-long works of Armstrong, Leslie, and Co. Where these works are was once one of the pleasantest of valleys. Now the furnaces vomit forth their flames, and the air is filled with smoke and the mighty clang of labour. [Illustration: OVINGHAM.] [Illustration: THE HIGH-LEVEL BRIDGE AND GATESHEAD.] THE TYNE. CHAPTER IV. FROM NEWCASTLE TO THE SEA. The Growth of Tyneside--"The Coaly Tyne"--Newcastle Bridges--Local Industries--Poetical Eulogies--Tyneside Landscapes--Sandgate and the Keelmen--Wallsend--Jarrow and the Venerable Bede--The Docks--Shields Harbour--North and South Shields--The Tyne Commission--Tynemouth Priory--The Open Sea. From Newcastle to the sea, twelve miles by water, the Tyne is a vast tidal dock. It stands second among the rivers of the kingdom for the extent of its commerce. The Thames takes precedence in the number of vessels which enter and leave, and the Mersey stands before it in respect of the total tonnage of the ships by which it is frequented; but the Tyne ranks second to the Thames in the number of vessels which enter the port, and second to the Mersey in the bulk of its trade. But more remarkable even than the commerce of the river are its great industries. From Gateshead to the sea on the one hand, and from Newcastle to the sea on the other, there is a constant succession of shipyards, chemical factories, engineering establishments, glass-works, docks, and coal-shoots. Newcastle, it has been remarked, owes its rise to war, its maintenance to piety, and its increase to trade. A very neat and true saying. But trade has done more for the Tyne than for Newcastle. It has, since the beginning of the century, increased the population of the chief Northumbrian town from 30,000 to 160,000; but it has increased the population of Tyneside to half a million or more.