The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

LANCASmKE. 265
which supplies a profitable cargo to outward-boiiud merchantmen, and in this
manner the miners of Cheshire contribute largely to the prosperity of the great
port of the Mersey. Most of this salt, which is cut into huge quadrangular blocks,
is sent to India, Russia, and the United States. The salt mines of Cheshire may
be less famous than those of WieUczka in Galicia, or of Hallein and HaUstatt in
Austria, but commercially they are certainly of far greater importance.
Crewe, to the east of JVantwich, has grown from an agricultural village into a
jDopulous hiye of industry since the establishment of the locomotiye factories of
the London and North-Western Railway Company. There are, besides these, iron
and Bessemer steel works.
Sandhach, Congleton, Macclesfield, and BolUngton, to the north-east of Crewe,
and at the foot of the picturesque range of heights which stretches along the
eastern border of the county, are the centres of a manufacturing district, in which
siUi spinning and weaving are the principal branches of industry carried on.
Macclesfield, the most important of these towns, engages also in the velvet and
cotton trade, and near it are coal mines and quarries.
A second manufacturing district of even greater importance occupies the north-
eastern portion of the county, extending down the picturesque valley of the
Mersey, almost from its origin in the moorlands of Yorkshire to within a few
miles of its junction with the Irwell. Cotton is king in this district, the natural
head-quarters of which are at Manchester. Stockport is the great cotton town of
Cheshire. It occupies a beautiful site on both banks of the Mersey, here spanned
by a fine viaduct, and, in addition to cotton stuffs, produces felt hats. Higher up
on the Mersey are Hyde, one of the most prosperous of these cotton towns,
DuMnfiekl, and Stalyhridge, which, in addition to cotton-miUs, have important
machine works, and manufacture nails and rivets. Bredbury and Mottram are the
principal towns in the Longdondale, which joins the Mersey above Stockport.
The hills along its sides yield coal and iron.
Descending the Mersey, we pass Sale, a small manufacturing town, and,
turning away from the river, reach Altringhain, or Altrincham, a clean and cheerful
town, with a few flax-miUs, close to Bowden Downs and the beautiful park of
Dunham Massey.
Lymm, near the confluence of the Bollin with the Mersey, and Knutsford, half-
way between the Bollin and the Weaver, are prosperous market towns.
Lancashire naturally faUs into three parts, of which the first lies between the
Mersey and the Ribble, and is the great seat of the cotton industry of the British
Islands ;
the second stretches to the north of the Ribble, and is mainly agricultural
whilst the third includes the hundred of Furness, a detached part of the county
lying beyond Morecambe Baj-, which has recently attained considerable importance
on account of its iron mines and furnaces. The central and eastern portions of
Southern Lancashire are occupied by hilly moorlands,* which throw off a branch
in the direction of Liverpool, and thus separate the plain of the Mersey, with its
mosses, from the western maritime plain, which near the coast merges into
• Pendlc Hill, their culminating point, attains a height of 1,816 feet.
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