ANGLING IN THE IR WELL. 107 



Having had little or no success below, in the numerous 

 places tried, we had made a push to get here. Arrived, we 

 found, instead of a rushing stream and a foaming waterfall, 

 a mere trickle from the tunnel mouth. It was proposed 

 that as there were no fish to be caught, and no water was 

 in the stream-bed, we should explore the latter. So away 

 we started into the dark tunnel, feeling our way with our 

 bundled-up rods. Step by step we went, in single file, 

 for such a length as seemed to us near a mile, (really 

 nearly a fourth of that distance,) during the major part of 

 which we saw before us a slight gleam of daylight. This 

 itself was a puzzle, as we knew well that we were going 

 towards the high lands of Clifton. We arrived at length 

 at the southern end of the passage, and found ourselves at 

 the bottom of a deep shaft or well, full of curious and 

 inexplicable machinery, made chiefly of oak. Long we 

 looked at it to make out what it meant. Many years 

 afterwards we came to know that it was a means of draw- 

 ing water out of the Clifton coal-mines, the machinery 

 being worked by the water of the river from above Ringley 

 Weir, and the whole having been designed and constructed 

 by the well-known Brindley, the engineer of the then 

 famous aqueduct at Barton-on-Irwell. On that memor- 

 able Saturday afternoon we got a spattering of knowledge 

 of this place, and it came in company with a great rush 

 of water that soon began to flow into the tunnel by which 

 we had arrived. We, of course, beat a retreat, going back 

 more rapidly than we came ; but it took so much time 

 that the water, which had not come to our ankles in our 

 " up journey," wetted us above the knees during our 



