1866. | The New Ivron-fields of England. 329 
The upper bed of iron-stone is alone worked, and this is done 
either by mining from adits driven into the sides of the hills, or by 
open-work, as at Hob Hill Quarries. It is of a greyish-green 
colour, finely oolitic in structure, and weathers into rusty concre- 
tionary bands and nodules. Some of the mines are on a very 
extensive scale. At Eston and Up-Leatham mines, the iron-stone 
rock dips into the hill from the outcrop at 1 in 15, becomes 
horizontal under the central part, and rises again to its outcrop at 
a distance of several miles to the southward in the valley of 
Guisborough. The mode of working is by galleries six yards wide, 
walls being left of equal width to support the roof, until the whole 
of the property is opened up, when these will be recovered by 
working backwards. A thorough system of drainage and ventila- 
tion is established, and the stone is drawn up in trucks to the 
mouth of the adits by stationary engines, and tipped over into the 
wagons of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in which it is 
earried direct to the furnaces. In general, it is considered that 
three tons of the raw ore produce one ton of pig-iron. 
The following are the proportions of fuel, flux, and stone in 
use at the works of Mr. B. Samuelson, M.P., in 1864, since which 
time the proportions of fuel have been considerably reduced :— 
3 tons of raw ore, or 2 tons 8 ewts. calcined ore 
24 ewt. coke : . . z : ° hone ton of grey forge pig. 
12 ewt. limestone . : : . 
The banks of the Tees, which are nearly flat for some distance 
from the river, and then rise with a gradually-increasing slope to 
the base of the Cleveland Hills, form an admirable site for the 
erection of smelting works and forges on the largest scale. Along 
the southern shore the Stockton and Darlington Railway has been 
carried to Saltburn, and in one direction serves to supply the ore, 
and in the other the fuel from the Durham coal-field. No one can 
drive along this line from Redcar to Stockton, and pass in succession 
the Titanic works which have been erected and are still rising along 
its course, without being impressed with the prodigious energy 
displayed by the iron-masters of this district; for it is to be 
remembered that the whole of these works have sprung into existence 
within the last sixteen years. Middlesborough is the metropolis of 
this trade, and the chief port for the shipment of the iron, both in 
its raw and manufactured states. Other smelting and manufac- 
turing works are also erected on the northern shore of the Tees, 
and in 1865 the whole district comprised 105 furnaces in blast, 
smelting very nearly one million tons of pig-iron. 
The Cleveland iron-stone becomes thinner, and is leaner towards 
the south, but as the quality of the iron is good, it is extensively 
worked in the valley of the Esk, near Whitby, the new line from 
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