FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. 237 



posted notices of the city authorities, offering a re- 

 ward for any one detected in injuring it. It has stood 

 now some seven or eight centuries, and from appear- 

 ances is good for one or two more. There are several 

 towers on the wall, from one of which some English 

 king, over two hundred years ago, witnessed the de- 

 feat of his army on Rowton Moor. But when I was 

 there, though the sun was shining, the atmosphere 

 was so loaded with smoke that I could not catch even 

 a glimpse of the moor where the battle took place. 

 There is a gateway through the wall on each of the 

 four sides, and this slender and beautiful but blackened 

 and worn span, as if to afford a transit from the 

 chamber windows on one side of the street to those 

 of the other, is the first glimpse the traveler gets of 

 the wall. The gates beneath the arches have en 

 tirely disappeared. The ancient and carved oak 

 fronts of the buildings on the main street, and the 

 inclosed sidewalk that ran through the second stories 

 of the shops and stores, were not less strange and 

 novel to me. The sidewalk was like a gentle up- 

 heaval in its swervings and undulations, or like a walk 

 through the woods, the oaken posts and braces on the 

 outside answering for the trees, and the prospect 

 ahead for the vista. 



The ride along the coast of "Wales was crowded 

 with novelty and interest the sea on one side and 

 the mountains on the other the latter bleak and 

 heathery in the foreground, but cloud-capped and 

 snow-white in the distance. The afternoon was dark 



