Staley Brushes. 145 



river rises in the moors above, and has at this part been 

 converted, by barricading, into five successive quasi- 

 lakes, not so picturesque, perhaps, as some of the other 

 great reservoirs we have made acquaintance with, but 

 still furnishing an agreeable spectacle, alike from the 

 train and from the hills. They contribute the chief 

 portion of the Manchester waterworks storage; the 

 collecting-grounds, which are estimated to have an 

 extent of nearly nineteen thousand acres, consisting 

 chiefly of moorland, covered, as at Kinder, with immense 

 sponges of mountain-peat. Retaining the rain, these 

 serve a purpose corresponding to that of the snows and 

 glaciers upon the Alps, so various are the ways in which 

 the munificence of nature is expressed. Mounting on 

 to the moors at the entrance to the Woodhead tunnel (by 

 the brookside) we presently find a clough, a waterfall, 

 and the beginnings of the river Derwent. Crossing the 

 river, as the alternative, there is a fine walk to Tint- 

 wistle, and thence, over other seemingly boundless moors, 

 to Staley Brushes. 



But now we get to a district better sought by 

 travel on the L. & N. W. line, the long and picturesque 

 portion of it, that is, which runs through the Saddleworth 

 valley en route for Leeds. With the mind absorbed in 

 thought of the place one is bound to, or of the duties or 

 occupations there awaiting our arrival, the scenery right 

 and left of a railway often receives a very indifferent 

 amount of attention. The line from Ashton to Hudders- 

 field, excepting only the great tunnel, is, one of those. 



