412 COFFEE. 



THE SALT DISTEICT OF CHESHIEE. 



FEEENT STEATA AND QUALITIES OF EOCK SAXT IS THE CHESHIEE 

 DISTEICT. 



Leaving Liverpool by the London and North "Western Eailway, 

 a ride of twenty miles brought me to the little station of Hartford, 

 where I left the train and took a carriage for a drive through the 

 salt district. Before reaching Hartford, however, we passed sev- 

 eral pretty rural villages, and also the great chemical manufac- 

 turing town of Widnes. Here are situated the great works of 

 Muspratt & Co., Golding, Davis & Co., Gossage & Co., and many 

 others whose brands are familiar to American manufacturers and 

 dealers, aU for the manufacture of soda ash, carbonate and caustic 

 soda, etc., and the town of Widnes, now containing several thousand 

 inhabitants, has been created solely by this industry. Here also 

 is situated the great bridge of the London and INorth Western 

 llailway over the river Mersey, one of the engineering wonders of 

 the age. But to return to the subject of salt. I entered a carriage 

 at Hartford, and proceeding by an old road, dating back to the 

 Koman period (in fact part of the old Koman highway from Ches- 

 ter to York), I soon reached Delamere Park, a portion of the 

 landed estate of Lord Delamere. Here, turning off from the 

 main road, I passed through the park, and on by a charming 

 English back country road, skirted by picturesque straw-thatched 

 vine-clad cottages, to the little village of Over. Here I began to 

 see the tall brick chimneys of the salt works, and, driving down to 

 Winsford Bridge, perhaps half a mile further, I was in close 

 proximity to a perfect forest of these, all belching forth clouds of 

 heavy black smoke, which fairly obscures the sun, and at all times 

 fills the air with the black floating particles thrown off by the 

 bituminous coal — imagine a black snow-storm on a gentle and light 

 scale, and you have an idea of the atmosphere. This smoke is so 

 dense and constant that it almost ruins vegetation, even the foli- 

 age of large trees being affected, so that it looks as if a blight had 

 passed over them, withering the leaves and blackening the 



