The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

264 THE BRITISH ISLES.
port may be watered. The two Bebiiiyfons areTpleasant villages to the south-east of
Birkenhead ; whilst Bildon, with the Liverpool Observatory, lies to the west.
Parhjale is a small watering-place on the estuary of the Dee.
Ascending the Mersey above Liverpool and Birkenhead, we reach Runcorn, in
the vicinity of the mouth of the "Weaver—the busy shipping port of the Stafford-
shire Potteries, and of the salt mines in the basin of the Weaver. That river is
fed by numerous streams which rise in the saliferous triassic formation. The
names of several towns in its neighbourhood terminate in the Celtic wich,
or rather wijche, which signifies "salt work," and must not be confounded
with the Danish wich, the meaning of which is " bay." Of these salt
Fig. 130.
—
Chester Cathedral (as restored).
mines and brine springs those at North wich are by far the most productive.
The saliferous strata have a total thickness of about 100 feet, and extend
for a considerable distance beneath the soil. They are honeycombed by the
galleries excavated by the miners, and although those are supported by a
multitude of pillars, the ground has given way in many places, and a portion of
the town had to be deserted by its inhabitants, who have built themselves fresh
dwellings at TFitton and other villages in the neighbourhood. Middktrich, on the
Dane, a tributary of the Weaver, and Nantmch, a q,uaiut old town, on the Weaver
itself, are the principal amongst the other salt towns of Cheshire. In favourable
years the mines and springs of the Weaver basin yield over 1,000,000 tons of salt,