Part 13

Some years ago the excise duty was twenty-five times the actual value of the salt; but that is now taken off, and therefore great additional quantities are raised for agricultural or other purposes. I hope this will benefit the workmen, who seem to be very poor, for their cottages are very wretched; each of them, however, is surrounded by a nice little garden; and my aunt made me observe, that the thrift, or sea-pink, flourishes there, as well as where it grows naturally in the salt atmosphere near the seashore.

I can write no more now. We continue here to-morrow, I believe; and the next day we shall go on to Llangollen.

_Penrhyn Arms, Bangor._

_20th._--Our whole journey through Wales has enchanted me; the mountains, rocky streams, and wooded banks, have more than realized all I had heard and read of its wild and impressive scenery.

My uncle took us to see the celebrated aqueduct of Pontcysylte, near Llangollen, which conducts the Ellesmere canal across the valley of the river Dee, at a great height from the bottom; and therefore saves the immense expense and loss of time that would have been occasioned by a series of _locks_ on each side of the valley. It is one thousand feet long, and supported on twenty stone piers, which rise to one hundred and thirty feet above the bed of the river; and he shewed us that the water-course, which in general is built of stone and made tight with clay, is, in this aqueduct, composed of plates of cast-iron, that rest on great iron ribs; the sides and bottom being screwed together, and the joinings filled with cement.

Having arrived in good time at Llangollen, we all went out to walk, and by some accident, my uncle entered into conversation with a very intelligent Scotchman, who was erecting some power looms. Machinery was, of course, the subject, and I think you will be amused by his description of an improved method of singeing off the small fibres of patent lace, so as to give it the proper _wiry_ appearance. He was so good as first to explain to us the common mode of destroying the rough knap upon calico.

There is a smooth iron cylinder set horizontally over a furnace, the heat of which can be nicely regulated. A reel is so placed on each side of it, that the cloth which is rolled round the one, when wound off on the other, is lightly drawn over the cylinder, and comes in contact with its red-hot surface, with just sufficient velocity to allow the loose woolly filaments to be burned without injuring the cloth. The finest muslins are made to go through this operation, and with such precision as to be very seldom damaged. But in lace it is not enough to remove the projecting fibres, all those that are inside the texture must also be destroyed, as the beauty of the lace is greatly increased by the hard crisp look of the main thread; and to effect this, the lace is usually drawn over a line of gas flame, so as to pass a current of heat through the open spaces. It has been found, however, that even the combustible net-work of lace stops the ascent of the flame, in the same manner that the wire-gauze in Sir Humphry Davy’s beautiful lamp prevents it from communicating with the inflammable gas in a mine. In the new method, to overcome this difficulty, a horizontal tube is placed a little above the lace, with a narrow slit just over the line or sheet of flame; and an air-pump being applied to the tube and rapidly worked, a strong draft is produced into the slit to replace the exhausted air. This draft draws up the flame along with it, in spite of the intervening meshes of the lace, and thus singes away the useless fibres within, as well as without.

In the course of our journey from Llangollen to this place, my uncle frequently made us observe the judgment with which the new road has been laid out by Mr. Telford, the same engineer who constructed the Llangollen aqueduct. In such a mountainous country it was impossible to avoid all hills; but by gradually winding up their sides, or by cutting the road out of the face of almost perpendicular cliffs, he has preserved one uniform and easy slope to the top of the highest ground, over which it passes; and yet at the same time he has shortened it by several miles. And besides all this, he has shown so much taste in the line he adopted, that my aunt says, one would think his only object had been to display the romantic scenery of North Wales to the best advantage.

We often went out of the carriage, and strolled about to look at the pretty water-falls and rocky passes; and we stopped for some time at the iron-bridge of Bettws. It is a single arch of more than one hundred feet span. The iron work that supports the road-way, consists of the emblems of the three kingdoms and Wales; the rose, thistle, shamrock, and leek; and along the lower rib of the whole arch, there is the following inscription in open iron letters, each of which is about two feet high:--

“This bridge was constructed the same year the battle of Waterloo was fought.”

All this road was new to my aunt; she admired some of the views exceedingly, and was, I think, particularly struck by a very wild spot where Ogwen Lake is pent up by a circle of dark, rugged, misty hills. In approaching this town we were amused by the various uses to which slate is applied--palings, stiles, gate-posts, tables, benches, troughs, milk-bowls, and many others; and as the famous Penrhyn slate quarries are within a few miles, my uncle proposes to remain here to-morrow, in order to visit them.

_Penrhyn Arms, Bangor._

_21st._--Well, mamma, we have been to those famous quarries, and they are indeed wonderful. But to me the most striking thing about them is, that such prodigious excavations should have been made in so short a period; for we were attended by an old man who actually remembers the first opening of the large quarry. It also seemed astonishing that they should have been the work of men who appeared so diminutive, when compared with the huge blocks of slate round which I saw them clustering and bustling like a colony of little ants round a straw.

Every thing is done here by a kind of task work. A piece of the rock is bought by a party of men, who agree to work together; they convert it into as great a number of slates as they can, and the overseer purchases them at stated prices. Their first operation is to blast off a large block: this is done by making a round hole about two or three feet deep, with a pointed iron crow; a pound of gunpowder is then poured in, and the hole is rammed full of clay or broken slate. A thick wire, which was kept in the hole while the ramming was going on, is now withdrawn, and a straw filled with fine powder is introduced into its place with a bit of match-paper fixed to the upper end. All is now ready--a man calls out with a loud voice that he is going to fire--the workmen scamper away and hide themselves in the hollows of the rock--and he then lights the slow-match, and escapes as fast as he can. I saw several of these explosions, or “shots,” as they call them, each of them cracking the rock to a great distance, and carrying up in the air a frightful shower of fragments, which, my uncle says, reminded him of the stones he saw thrown out of Mount Vesuvius, in one of the great eruptions. The masses that were cracked by the explosion are now detached with levers and wedges, and broken into pieces of a proper size, which are then split into slates, while the blasters are preparing fresh materials; so that no one is idle for a moment.

The names given to the different sizes of slates will amuse you; they are taken from all ranks of our sex; queens, duchesses, countesses and ladies; and each size has its peculiar thickness. I was very much interested by the quickness and expertness with which the splitters did their part of the business: the workman gently drives a chisel, or thin wedge, with his mallet into the edge of the block--you see the crack running slowly along--and then by a certain motion of the chisel he separates the whole surface as neatly as a carpenter splits a piece of straight deal into laths. I was surprised at seeing some of these thin leaves of slate bending considerably while the splitter was forcing them off; but my uncle says, that all stones have more or less elasticity, and that a small marble ball will rebound to a considerable height, if dropped on a hard substance. Some kinds of stone have a disposition to warp or bend permanently, as he made me recollect was the case in one of the slabs of marble in the dining-room fire-place at Fernhurst; and, he says, that the flags in many of the streets of London, are hollow on the upper surface from their having been originally too thin, and from being supported only at the edges, they have yielded in the middle.

After the slates are split, they are squared and cut to the various shapes and sizes used in roofing; this is generally done in a rough but expeditious manner with a sort of a chopper, but some of the larger and finer kinds are cut with frame-saws, so as to be precisely of the same dimensions, and to have nice smooth edges. These are called _milled_ slates, because the saws are worked by a water-mill. Of course, we went to see this operation: a fine mountain stream turns the wheel which gives motion to more than a dozen pair of long frame-saws; each pair is set to the distance required for the length or the breadth of the slate, so that the parallel sides are cut by the same stroke; and, as the saws move forward and backward, water is kept constantly dripping into the cut, and sand is thrown in by boys. The saws, we were told, would make but slow progress without the assistance of sand--the sharp grains of which are carried forward by the jagged teeth of the saw, and are thus made to tear away the slate.

“It is on this principle,” said my uncle, “that precious stones are cut by a thin circular plate of iron, with emery, or diamond powder. And a seal engraver’s apparatus is only a sort of lathe, to which he can attach small copper-wheels that are made to revolve with great rapidity. To the plain edge of one of these wheels, he applies oil, with a little diamond powder, which soon cuts into the hardest stone; and thus by the form and size of the wheel, and the direction in which the stone is pressed against it, he can accomplish any device either in relief or intaglio. In all these cases, the particles of sand, emery, or diamond, bed themselves in the soft metal, and grind away the harder surface opposed to them; and, what will appear rather singular at first sight, when two hard substances rub against each other, it is the hardest which wears away the most. For instance, the highly tempered steel _knife-edges_, by which some pendulums are suspended, for experimental purposes, are less liable to wear than the still harder agate planes, on which they work: for the minute atoms of dust, conveyed by the air, adhere to the steel, and in the course of time act upon the agate.”

But to return to our mill. Solid blocks, thick enough to make about twenty slates, are thus sawed first, and afterwards split in the usual manner. Here also, we saw an immense number of little writing-slates; they are made from the finest grained part of the quarry; and their smooth surface is produced by an operation very like that of planing a board.

The great blocks are carried from the quarry to the mill, and the slates, when dressed and finished, are also conveyed to the sea-side, by little waggons on _iron railways_. It is wonderful what a load a horse will draw in this manner when compared with the utmost work he can do on the best common road; and yet a railway appears to be a very simple contrivance. Two parallel lines of flat iron bars are laid along the road; the horse walks between them, and thus the wheels of the waggon in rolling along the bars, neither meet with the stones and obstacles which would impede their motion on a road, nor do they sink into its hollows, and soft places. The bars are scarcely broader than the rim of the wheels, which would, therefore, slip off, but for a little raised ledge, or, as it is called a _flange_, along one edge of each bar. When railways are intended to carry heavy weights, both going and coming, they must be laid perfectly level: but at these quarries, as all the weight goes _down_ to the Port for embarkation, the same horse that draws several loaded waggons hooked together down hill, can return up hill with an equal number of empty ones.

From the mill we drove to the Port of Penrhyn, which is just behind this house, and where all the slates are shipped. A prettier spot cannot be seen--the sea to the northward--the Strait of Menai--the blue hills of Wales--the town of Beaumaris, on the opposite coast of Anglesea--and the quay or pier embosomed by the surrounding high banks, with a few patches of trees on their summits. The whole harbour was full of vessels waiting their turn for loading, and the busy appearance of waggons, horses, and drivers, ships, boats, and sailors, all in motion, presented a most interesting scene.

Before I go to bed, I must add a curious coincidence that occurred this evening. My uncle had brought with him, as his travelling book, the Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford; and, after he had been explaining to me the history and the importance of rail roads, he opened his book, and I sat down to my journal. But he had scarcely begun to read, when he came to a passage describing a road, nicely levelled, and laid with long boards--to all intents a _railway_: and this was used for conveying coals from one of the pits at Newcastle, so long ago as the year 1670. Yet it was not, my uncle remarked, till 1767, that _iron_ railways were invented. Mr. W. Reynolds of Coalbrook-dale first adopted them; and his example was quickly followed in all parts of Great Britain, and indeed all over the world.

One word more, dear mamma, and then I will go to bed; but my uncle has just read to us such an interesting passage from that same Lord Keeper’s life, that I really must tell it to you. The children of the family at Badminton were bred with philosophical care; no inferior servants were permitted to talk to them for fear of their imbibing some mean sentiments; and he mentions the following anecdote as a proof of their high principles. Lord Arthur, who was then little more than five years old, reproached the Chief Justice Hales with his cruelty in condemning men to be hanged. The judge told him, that if they were not hanged, they would continue to kill and steal. “No,” replied the boy, “you should make them promise upon their honour that they would not.”

What a fine sense of honour that child had!

_June 22nd._--

_Mona Inn._

Mona on Snowdon calls! Hear, thou king of mountains, hear; Hark, she speaks from all her strings Hark, her loudest echo rings; King of mountains, bend thine ear: Send thy spirits, send them soon, Now, when midnight and the moon Meet upon thy front of snow: See their gold and ebon rod, Where the sober sisters nod, And greet in whispers sage and slow. Snowdon mark! ’tis magic’s hour; Now the muttered spell hath power-- Power to rend thy ribs of rock, And burst thy base with thunder’s shock; But to thee no ruder spell Shall Mona use, than those that dwell In music’s secret cells, and lie Steeped in the stream of harmony.

Caroline repeated these lines after we had ascended the new road from the Menai bridge, and were losing sight of the extensive view of Plas Newydd, the winding straits, and Snowdon proudly towering over the Caernarvon mountains.

“Well chosen lines,” said my aunt, “Mason’s Caractacus is always interesting, but particularly so in this once sacred island, where

---- with more than mortal fire Mighty Mador smote the lyre.”

“Mason gives such a nice touch of mystery to these lines,” said Caroline, “that I almost feel the magic spell, and expect to see the mountains whiten with the slow-descending Druids.”

“I wish, uncle, that you would tell me something about the Druids; I am very fond of the history of those early times.”

“That, probably, arises from your love of fairy tales and fables, Bertha; for there is much fable, I believe, in all early history: but be that as it may, we may amuse ourselves with Druidical fable while we drive along this bare country:--now for your questions.”

“In the first place, then, uncle, what were those mysterious Druids?”

“The Druids were the priests or ministers of the religion of the ancient Britons. Their worship was devoted chiefly to the sun; but they had, it is thought, several inferior deities. They offered human victims in sacrifice, and practised many extraordinary rites; the caverns and gloomy groves of oak in which they dwelt, and the dread which hung over their mysterious worship, gave them a terrific influence over the minds of the people. Music aided superstition in preserving this influence; for they were attended by bards, whose effusions, supposed to be inspired, either raised or lulled the passions as they chose. This is expressed in the address of the chorus in Caractacus to Mador the chief of bards:--

Mador, thou Alone shalt lift thy voice; no choral peal Shall drown thy solemn warblings; thou best know’st That opiate charm which lulls corporeal sense: Thou hast the key, great Bard! that best can ope The portal of the soul; unlock it straight, And lead the pensive pilgrim on her way Through the vast regions of futurity.

“The Druids alone had the privilege of wearing white clothes; their persons were inviolable; and they were exempted from all service and taxes. What little knowledge there was in those times was entirely confined to them; so that, besides their priestly duties, the practice of medicine and the administration of justice were in their hands; and those who resisted their decrees were placed under a dreadful ban, or interdict, during which no one dared to speak or look at the culprit. Thus possessing all the real power of the state, and venerated as the immediate interpreters of the gods, the children of the highest families were eagerly made over to them; and even princes were ambitious to belong to their fraternity. This unbounded influence and their great riches naturally exciting the jealousy of the Romans, in the reigns of Claudius and of Nero, they were nearly destroyed; and the oak woods of Anglesea, or, as it was then called, Mona, the residence of the chief Druid, were burned. There are still many remains of their temples in this island, and it is said that some of their caves have been traced,

where underneath The soil we tread, a hundred secret paths, Scooped through the living rock in winding maze, Lead to as many caverns dark and deep.

“You spoke of their riches, papa,” said Mary; “but by what means could those inhabitants of rocks and woods have acquired any?”

“I think we may conclude that those who possessed such an unlimited ascendancy over the people must have known how to enrich themselves; and you may also recollect, that as their principal establishments were in our best mining districts, it is probable that they supplied the country with all the tin, copper, and lead that were used. It has been further suggested that they availed themselves of the famous Parys copper mine in this island, not only for its valuable produce, but for the purpose of imposing on the credulity and superstition of their followers; for the apparent conversion of bits of iron into copper, when steeped in the strongly saturated water of the mine, as well as the blood-coloured streams which were thus produced, could have been easily represented as resulting from the supernatural power of those crafty impostors.”

“You said, uncle, that the worship of the Druids was chiefly directed to the Sun; from which I suppose they were the fire-worshippers you mentioned on May-day, who came here from the East.”

In reply, my uncle told me, that “there certainly were some points of resemblance between the Persian Magi and the Druids of Britain. They were each forbidden to worship the deity within covered buildings; and all acts of devotion were confined to open temples or consecrated forests. Like the Persians, they beheld the Creator in the works of nature; and gigantic trees and massive rocks, were the symbols of Almighty power which they most admired.

“The Druids and the Baal worshippers of Asia formed sacred heaps of stones on the tops of the hills. Many of these are to be found in Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland--and the name which they bear of _Cairn_, is derived from a Hebrew word descriptive of buildings like the pyramids of Egypt, or the cone-shaped pagodas of India, which are supposed to have been emblematical of the rays of the sun.”

I reminded my uncle of the singular temple which cousin Hertford saw in the Isle of Lewis.

“Yes,” he said, “it is evidently the remains of a great Druidical work; and Maurice, in his ‘Indian Antiquities,’ observes that Stonehenge, a model of which I once shewed you, Bertha, plainly alludes in situation, number of stones, and other circumstances, to the Asiatic Astronomy, and resembles in every respect the ancient style of temple used by the Persians before the time of Zoroaster. It was he who first covered in the Persian temples to preserve the sacred fire; and therefore the arrival of the colony here, who introduced the fire-worshippers, must have been in a very early age. But,” he continued, “I must not lead you into this maze of antiquarian difficulty; it has been a very interesting object of research to a few learned people, though it can only perplex the half-informed.”

“But tell me, uncle, is this idea of an eastern colony a very new one?”

“Oh no,” said he, “it has long existed in tradition, and is alluded to in one of the Druid’s odes in Caractacus.

Hail, thou harp of Phrygian frame! In years of yore that Cambria bore From Troy’s sepulchral flame; With ancient Brute, to Britain’s shore, The mighty minstrel came.”

I asked then if there were any traces of the Eastern languages amongst us, besides the few detached words he had once mentioned to me; though I thought there was but little chance that any could have been preserved in a country where so many nations had successively settled.

“Yes,” said he, “a celebrated antiquary has proved that there is really a strong resemblance between the Irish language and the Hebrew, which is considered the original, or first of all languages. In the Welsh also, or British, which is of the same nature as the Irish, many words appear to be of Eastern origin; and a gentleman of Bristol having lately collected the common old British names of the indigenous plants, has found several of them to be in sound and sense pure Hebrew.”

“Pray, uncle, what is the meaning of the word Druid--would not that throw some light on the subject?”

“It is impossible,” he said, “now to determine its original meaning; and indeed the derivations of that kind of words are in general only fanciful guesses. By some, Druid has been derived from a Greek word _drus_, signifying oak; and by others from an old British word _dree_, which has the same meaning. It has also been supposed to come from a Saxon word _dryth_, which means magician; and, according to others from a Celtic word _druis_, a doctor or learned man. There is a curious circumstance which seems to corroborate its derivation from oak,--namely, that in every country where the worship of the sun has prevailed, the oak has been venerated. It is also singular that the two names by which that tree is still known in Persia and India, had the same meaning in the ancient British and in Irish, _gaur_ and _bahk_.”