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50. Thick Acherontic rivers, &c.] The water that flows from the coal is collected into one stream, which runs towards the fire-engines. This water is yellow and turbid, from a mixture of ocher, and so very corrosive, that it quickly consumes iron.

ibid. How, breathless, with faint pace, and slow, &c.] Those who descend into these mines, find them most close and sultry in the middle parts, that are most remote from the pits and adits, and perceive them to grow cooler the nearer they approach to those pits which are sunk to the deepest parts of the mines; down which pits, large streams of fresh air are made to descend, and up which, the water is drawn out, by means of fire-engines.

51. Where Earth, &c.] The vein of coal is not always regularly continued in the same inclined plane, but, instead thereof, the miners frequently meet with hard rock, which interrupts their further progress, At such places there seem to have been breaks in the earth, from the surface downwards; one part of the earth seeming to have sunk down, while the part adjoining has remained in its ancient situation. In some of these places, the earth may have sunk ten or twenty fathoms, or more; in other places, less than one fathom. These breaks, the miners call Dykes; and when they come at one of them, their first care is to discover whether the strata in the part adjoining be higher or lower than in the part where they have been working: or, (to use their own terms) whether the coal be cast down, or cast up. If it be cast down,

they sink a pit to it; but if it be cast up to any considerable height, they are often-times obliged, with great labor and expence, as at the place here described, to carry forwards a level or long gallery through the rock, until they again arrive at the stra tum of coal.

51. Whose roofs, &c.] These colors, with which the free-stone roof of the mines is beautifully variegated in many places, and which have the appearance of clouds, seem to proceed from exsudations of salts, ocher, and other earthy substances.

ibid. While pent within the iron womb, &c.] The au

thor hath here taken occasion to celebrate the fireengine, the invention of which does such honor to this nation. He has endeavored to describe, in a poetic manner, the effects of the elastic steam, and the great power of the atmosphere; which, by their alternate actions, give force and motion to the beam of this engine, and by it, to the pump-rods, which elevate the water through tubes, and discharge it out of the mine. It appears, from pretty exact calculations, that it would require about 550 men, or a power equal to that of 110 horses, to work the pumps of one of the largest fire-engines now in use, (the diameter of whose cylinder is seventy inches) and thrice that number of •men to keep an engine of this size constantly at work. And that as much water may be raised by an engine of this size kept constantly at work, as can be drawn up by 2520 men with rollers and buckets, after the manner now daily practised in many mines; or as

much as can be borne up on the shoulders of twice that number of men; as is said to be done in some of the mines of Peru.-So great is the power of the air in one of those engines.

There are four fire-engines belonging to this colliery; which, when all at work, discharge from it about 1228 gallons every minute, at thirteen strokes; 1,768,320 gallons every twenty-four hours. By the four engines here employed, nearly twice the abovementioned quantity of water might be discharged from mines that are not above sixty or seventy fathoms deep, which depth is rarely exceeded in the Newcastle collieries, or in any of the English collieries, those of Whitehaven excepted.

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The reader may find an account of Savery's engine in Harris's Lexicon Technicum.Many great improvements have been made to it since, and are daily making; several of which are related in the Philosophical Transactions. The best account of it, its various improvement and uses, is, I think, in Dr. Desaguliers's course of experimental philosophy, vol. II.

52. Above your heads, &c.] The mines are here sunk to the depth of one hundred and thirty fathoms, and are extended under the sea to places where there is, above them, sufficient depth of water for ships of Jarge burden. These are the deepest coal-mines that have hitherto been wrought; and perhaps the miners .have not, in any other part of the globe, penetrated to so great a depth below the surface of the sea; the

very deep mines in Hungary, Peru, and elsewhere, being situated in mountainous countries, where the surface of the earth is elevated to a great height above the level of the ocean.

54. Your native stream, &c.] The river Lowther. 55. On azure roofs, &c.] The houses of this country are covered with a beautiful blue slate.

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ibid. Sweet Keswick's vale, &c.] This delightful vale is thus elegantly described by the late ingenious Dr. Brown in a letter to a friend. "In my way to the north from Hagley, I passed through Dovedale; and, to say the truth, was disappointed in it. When I came to Buxton, I visited another or two of their romantic scenes; but these are inferior to Dovedale. They are all but poor miniatures of Keswick; which exceeds them more in grandeur than I can give you to imagine; and more, if possible, in beauty than in grandeur.

"Instead of the narrow slip of valley which is seen at Dovedale, you have at Keswick a vast amphitheatre, in circumference above twenty miles. Instead of a meagre rivulet, a noble living lake, ten miles round, of an oblong form, adorned with a variety of wooded islands. The rocks indeed of Dovedale are finely wild, pointed, and irregular; but the hills are both little and unanimated; and the margin of the brook is poorly edged with weeds, morass, and brushwood. But at Keswick, you will, on one side of the lake, see a rich and beautiful landskip of cultivated fields, rising to the eye in fine inequalities, with noble groves

of oak, happily dispersed; and climbing the adjacent hills, shade above shade, in the most various and picturesque forms. On the opposite shore, you will find rocks and cliffs of stupendous height, hanging broken over the lake in horrible grandeur, some of them a thousand feet high, the woods climbing up their steep and shaggy sides, where mortal foot never yet approached: on these dreadful heights the eagles build their nests; a variety of water-falls are seen pouring from their summits, and tumbling in vast sheets from rock to rock in rude and terrible magnificence while on all sides of this immense amphitheatre the lofty mountains rise around, piercing the clouds in shapes as spiry and fantastic as the very rocks of Dovedale. To this I must add the frequent and bold projection of the cliffs into the lake, forming noble bays and promontories: in other parts they finely retire from it, and often open in abrupt chasms or clefts, through which at hand you see rich and un◄ cultivated vales, and beyond these, at various distance, mountain rising over mountain; among which, new prospects present themselves in mist, till the eye is lost in an agreeable perplexity:

Where active fancy travels beyond sense,

And pictures things unseen..

"Were I to analyse the two places in their consti. tuent principles, I should tell you, that the full perfection of Keswick consists of three circumstances, beauty, horror, and immensity united; the second of

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