In One Hour We Had Passed Over The Thirty-One Miles
Which Separate Manchester From Liverpool; Shooting Rapidly Over Chat
Moss, a black blot in the green landscape, overgrown with heath, which, at
this season of the year, has an
Almost sooty hue, crossing bridge after
bridge of the most solid and elegant construction, and finally entered
Manchester by a viaduct, built on massive arches, at a level with the
roofs of the houses and churches. Huge chimneys surrounded us on every
side, towering above the house-tops and the viaduct, and vomiting smoke
like a hundred volcanoes. We descended and entered Market-street, broad
and well-built, and in one of the narrowest streets leading into it, we
were taken to our comfortable hotel.
At Manchester we walked through the different rooms of a large
calico-printing establishment. In one were strong-bodied men standing over
huge caldrons ranged along a furnace, preparing and stirring up the
colors; in another were the red-hot cylinders that singe the down from the
cloth before it is stamped; in another the machines that stamp the colors
and the heated rollers that dry the fabric after it is stamped. One of the
machines which we were shown applies three different colors by a single
operation. In another part of the establishment was the apparatus for
steaming the calicoes to fasten the colors; huge hollow iron wheels into
which and out of which the water was continually running and revolving in
another part to wash the superfluous dye from the stamped cloths; the
operation of drying and pressing them came next and in a large room, a
group of young women, noisy, drab-like, and dirty, were engaged in
measuring and folding them.
This morning we take the coach for the Peak of Derbyshire.
Letter XIX.
Edale in Derbyshire.
Derby, England, _June_ 3, 1845.
I have passed a few pleasant days in Derbyshire, the chronicle of which I
will give you.
On the morning of the 30th of May, we took places at Manchester in the
stage-coach for Chapel-en-le-Frith. We waited for some time before the
door of the Three Angels in Market-street, the finest street in
Manchester, broad and well-built, while the porters were busy in fastening
to the vehicle the huge loads of luggage with which the English commonly
travel. As I looked on the passers by, I was again struck with what I had
observed almost immediately on entering the town - the portly figures and
florid complexions of some, and the very diminutive stature and sallow
countenances of others. Among the crowds about the coach, was a ruddy
round-faced man in a box-coat and a huge woollen cravat, walking about and
occasionally giving a look at the porters, whom we took to be the
coachman, so well did his appearance agree with the description usually
given of that class. We were not mistaken, for in a short time we saw him
buttoning his coat, and deliberately disentangling the lash from the
handle of a long coach whip.
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