a cliff of sandstone, some hundred feet in height, overhung by luxuriant foliage, beyond which is seen the graceful spire of Worsley church. In contrast to this scenic beauty above, lies the almost stagnant pool beneath. The barges* laden with coal emerge from the mine through the two low, semi-circular arches opening at the base of the rock, such being the entrances to the underground workings. The smaller aperture is the mouth of a canal of only half a mile in length, serving to prevent the obstruction which would be caused by the entrance and egress of so many barges through a single passage. The other archway is the entrance of a wider channel, extending nearly six miles in the direction of Bolton, from which various other canals diverge in different directions.

In Brindley's time, this subterranean canal, hewn out of the rock, was only about a mile in length, but it now extends to nearly forty miles in all directions underground. Where the tunnel passed through earth or coal, the arching was of brickwork; but where it passed through rock, it was simply hewn out. This tunnel acts not only as a drain and water-feeder for the canal itself, but as a means of carrying the facilities of the navigation through the very heart of the collieries; and it will readily be seen of how great a value it must have proved in the economical working of the navigation, as well as of the mines, so far as the traffic in coals was concerned.

At every point Brindley's originality and skill were at work. He invented the cranes for the purpose of more readily loading the boats with the boxes filled with the Duke's black diamonds." He also contrived and laid down within the mines a system of underground railways, all leading from the face of the coal, where the miners

*The barges are narrow and long, each conveying about ten tons of coal. They are drawn along the tunnels by means of staples fastened to the sides. When they

are empty, and consequently higher in the water, they are so near the roof that the bargemen, lying on their backs, can propel them with their feet.

worked, to the wells which he had made at different points in the tunnels, through which the coals were shot into the boats waiting below to receive them. At Manchester, where they were unloaded for sale, the contrivances which he employed were equally ingenious. It was at first intended that the canal should terminate at the foot of Castle Hill, up which the coals were dragged by their purchasers from the boats in wheelbarrows or carts. But the toil of dragging the loads up the hill was found very great; and, to remedy the inconvenience, Brindley contrived to extend the canal for some way into the hill, opening a shaft from the surface of the ground down to the level of the water. The barges having made their way to the foot of this shaft, the boxes of coal were hoisted to the surface by a crane, worked by a box water-wheel of 30 feet diameter and 4 feet 4 inches wide, driven by the waterfall of the river Medlock. In this contrivance Brindley was only adopting a modification of the losing and gaining bucket, moved on a vertical pillar, which he had before successfully employed in drawing water out of coal-mines. By these means the coals were rapidly raised to the higher ground, where they were sold and distributed, greatly to the convenience of those who came to purchase them.

Brindley's practical ability was equally displayed in planning and building a viaduct or in fitting up a crane -in carrying out an embankment or in contriving a coalbarge. The range and fertility of his constructive genius were extraordinary. For the Duke, he invented waterweights at Rough Close, riddles to wash coal for the forges, raising dams, and numerous other contrivances of welladapted mechanism. At Worsley he erected a steamengine for draining those parts of the mine which were beneath the level of the canal, and consequently could not be drained into it; and he is said to have erected, at a cost of only 150l., an engine which until that time no one had known how to construct for less than 5007. At the mouth of one of the mines he erected a water-bellows for the pur

CHAP. VIII.

HIS VARIOUS CONTRIVANCES.

181

pose of forcing fresh air into the interior, and thus ventilating the workings.* At the entrance of the underground canal he designed and built a mill of a new construction, driven by an over-shot wheel twenty-four feet in diameter, which worked three pair of stones for grinding corn, besides a dressing or boulting mill, and a machine for sifting sand and mixing mortar.

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Brindley's quickness of observation and readiness in turning circumstances to advantage were equally displayed in the mode by which he contrived to obtain an ample supply of lime for building purposes during the progress of the works. We give the account as related by Arthur Young :-" In carrying on the navigation," he observes, "a vast quantity of masonry was necessary for building aqueducts, bridges, warehouses, wharves, &c., and the want of lime was felt severely. The search that was made for matters that would burn into lime was for a long time fruitless. At last Mr. Brindley met with a substance of a chalky kind, which, like the rest, he tried; but found (though it was of a limestone nature-lime-marl, which was found along the sides of the canal, about a foot below the surface) that, for want of adhesion in the parts, it would not make lime. This most inventive genius happily fell upon an expedient to remedy this misfortune. He thought of tempering this earth in the nature of brickearth, casting it in moulds like bricks, and then burning it; and the success was answerable to his wishes. In that

* A writer in the St. James's Chronicle,' under date the 30th of September, 1763, gives the following account of this apparatus, long since removed :-" At the mouth of the cavern is erected a waterbellows, being the body of a tree, forming a hollow cylinder, standing upright. Upon this a wooden basin is fixed, in the form of a funnel, which receives a current of water from the higher ground.

This

water falls into the cylinder, and issues out at the bottom of it, but at the same time carries a quantity of air with it, which is received into the pipes and forced to the innermost recesses of the coalpits, where it issues out as if from a pair of bellows, and rarefies the body of thick air, which would otherwise prevent the workmen from subsisting on the spot where the coals are dug."

state it burnt readily into excellent lime; and this acquisition was one of the most important that could have been made. I have heard it asserted more than once that this stroke was better than twenty thousand pounds in the Duke's pocket; but, like most common assertions of the same kind. it is probably an exaggeration. However, whether the discovery was worth five, ten, or twenty thousand, it certainly was of noble use, and forwarded all the works in an extraordinary manner.” *

It has been stated that Brindley's nervous excitement was so great on the occasion of the letting of the water into the canal, that he took to his bed at the Wheatsheaf, in Stretford, and lay there until all cause for apprehension was over. The tension on his brain must have been great, with so tremendous a load of work and anxiety upon him; but that he "ran away,"† as some of his detractors have

'Six Months' Tour,' vol. iii, p. 270-1. Mr. Hughes, C.E., says of this discovery: "The lime thus made would appear to be the first cement of which we have any knowledge in this country; since the calcareous marl here spoken of would probably produce, when burnt, a lime of strong hydraulic properties."

This story was first set on foot, we believe, by the Earl of Bridgewater, in his singularly incoherent publication entitled, "A Letter to the Parisians and the French Nation upon Inland Navigation, containing a defence of the public character of His Grace Francis Egerton, late Duke of Bridgewater. By the Hon. Francis Henry Egerton.' The first part of this curious book (published at Paris, was dated "Hôtel Egerton, Paris, 21st Dec., 1818; the second part was published two years later; and a third part, consisting entirely of a note about Hebrew interpretations, was

published subsequently. He had in the mean time become Earl of Bridgewater, in October, 1823, having formerly been prebendary of Durham and rector of Whitchurch in Shropshire. The late Earl of Ellesmere, in his Essays on History, Biography,' &c., says of this nobleman that "he died at Paris in the odour of eccentricity." But this is a mild description of his lordship, who had at least a dozen distinct crazes-about canals, the Jews, punctuation, the wonderful merits of the Egertons, the proper translation of Hebrew, the ancient languages generally, but more especially about prophecy and poodle-dogs. When he drove along the Boulevards in Paris, nothing could be seen of his lordship for poodle-dogs looking out of the carriage-windows. The poodles sat at table with him at dinner, each being waited on by a special valet. The most creditable thing the Earl did was to leave the sum of 12,000l.