144 History of Inland Transport 



carriage, for want of which the petitioners send their goods 

 twenty-two miles by land carriage (to Rawcliffe) the expense 

 whereof is not only very chargeable but they are forced to 

 stay two months sometimes while the roads are impassable 

 to market, and many times the goods receive considerable 

 damage, through the badness of the roads by overturning." 



The general conditions of life in Yorkshire towns in Defoe's 

 day, when the Aire and Calder had been made navigable, 

 but when bad roads still dominated the situation from a social 

 and domestic standpoint, are shown in the account he gives 

 of his visit to Halifax. After explaining how the people 

 devoted themselves mainly to cloth production and imported 

 most of their household requirements, he says : 



" Their Corn comes up in great quantities out of Lincoln, 

 Nottingham and the East Riding ; their Black Cattle and 

 the Horses from the North Riding, their Sheep and Mutton 

 from the adjacent Counties every way, their Butter from the 

 East and North Riding, their Cheese out of Cheshire and 

 Warwickshire, more Black Cattle also from Lancashire. And 

 here the Breeders and Feeders, the Farmers and Country 

 People find Money flowing in plenty from the Manufactures 

 and Commerce ; so that at Halifax, Leeds and the other 

 great manufacturing Towns, and adjacent to these, for the 

 two months of September and October a prodigious Quantity 

 of Black Cattle is sold. 



" This Demand for Beef is occasioned thus : the usage of 

 the People is to buy in at that Season Beef sufficient for the 

 whole Year which they kill and salt, and hang up in the 

 Smoke to dry. This way of curing their Beef keeps it all the 

 Winter, and they eat this smoak'd Beef as a very great 

 Rarity. 



" Upon this foot 'tis ordinary for a Clothier that has a 

 large Family, to come to Halifax on a Market Day, and buy 

 two or three large Bullocks from eight to ten Pounds a-piece. 

 These he carries home and kills for his Store. And this is 

 the reason that the markets at all those times of the Year 

 are thronged with Black Cattle, as Smithfield is on a Friday, 

 whereas all the rest of the year there is little extraordinary 

 sold there." 



We have here full confirmation of what I have already said 

 as to the way in which people in former days provisioned 



