[ 6i ] 



CHAPTEE Y. 



ACROSS THE HUMBEE. 



I AM afraid it is less the size and importance of the 

 chief port on the Humber — its population, activii}- 

 and wealth — which causes the memory to retain a 

 lively impression of my arrival within its precincts for 

 the first time, than the fact that I had just settled 

 up one of the heaviest hotel bills it had ever been 

 my lot to experience. My arrival on the Humber, 

 therefore, was rather in the nature of a strategic 

 movement in the face of the enemy, than a voluntary 

 sojourn within sight of its broad and swift-running 

 stream. 



For with several colleagues I had been engaged 

 in the North of England, in the early seventies, in 

 surveying and concerting telegraph arrangements. 

 We had fixed on Scarborough as a convenient as well 

 as pleasant centre from which we might arrange 

 divergences to some of the neighbouring towns within 

 our programme of visits — out in the morning, as it 

 were, and back again at night — and rooms, certainly 

 very fine, spacious, handsome rooms, had been 



