ITINERARIES. 



127 



Hence, climbing many stony hills, and passing many 

 iinevennesses, I proceeded as far as Dickly, in the way to 

 Manchester, which is a large and a very neat town. Here 

 I took notice of the college and the new library, which 

 they had furnished with useful and choice books. I saw 

 the free-school and the church, from the steeple of which 

 I had a prospect of the town. Accompanied with Mr. 

 Birch, the school-master, I went to see the place, where 

 of old had been, I think, a Roman fortification, which 

 they there call the castle ; it is a inile or more from the 

 town ; the area thereof is large. Near this spot I saw a 

 little house cut out of the rock, the like whereto I had 

 before seen at Guy's Cliff, and since at Bridgenorth, Not- 

 tingham, and other places. 



August the 24th, I directed my course towards North 

 Wales, and that night lay at West Chester. I passed 

 through Northwych, where I saw the manner of making 

 salt. The brine pit or salt spring is near to the bank of 

 the river, thence they pump up the water, which is by 

 troughs conveyed into the pans, where it is evaporated by 

 boiling. The salt, after its crystallizing, falls down to the 

 bottom, and they take it out by wooden scummers and 

 put it in frails, and set it in a warm room behind the 

 furnace to drain and dry. The salt is very white ; I did 

 not inquire whether they made use of ox's blood, as they 

 do who make salt of sea water. The city of Chester is 

 large and indifferently fair. It hath one peculiarity which 

 no other town hath, that I have seen in England ; that 

 is, the rows, as they call them, or cloisters on each side 

 of all the considerable streets in the town, in which one 

 may walk the streets under cover in the dry, in the most 

 rainy and wet weather. The town is well walled about ; 

 the cathedral built of a red sandy stone, which suffers 

 much by the weather ; it hath httle beauty within or 



(J. Bauliin) to belong to S. reticulata, and that thus Dillenius has been 

 misled into giving the former plant under two names in his edition of the 

 ' Synopsis.' Shoidd this view be correct, 8. retmdafa must be considered 

 as inhabiting the Scottish mountains alone in Britain. — C. C. B.] 



