The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

LANOASniEE. 267
The coast of Lancashire, though much indented by arms of the sea, is
singularly deficient in good harbours, and even the approaches to the Mersey are
much obstructed by sand-banks. Morecambe Bay, which forms so inviting
a feature on a map, is also choked with sand-banks, and when the tide is out it is
possible to cross almost dryshod.
Lancashire is most essentially a manufacturing and mining county, its aori-
culture being quite of secondary importance. An extensive system of canals
places its principal centres of population in communication with each other,
and railways intersect it in every direction.
There is not, probably, a river in the world which sets In motion the wheels
of so many mills, and carries on its back so many vessels, as does the Mersey
and yet this river drains only a small basin, and its volume does not exceed
1,400 cubic feet a second. But within this basin lies Manchester, the great seat of
W.of G. B- 30
Fig. 132.
—
Manchester and Environs.
Scale 1 : 375,000.
the cotton trade, and its mouth is guarded by Liverpool, the commercial port of the
most important manufacturing region in the world.
Manchester and Salford are built upon the black and dye-stained waters of the
Irwell, Irk, and Medlock, into which numerous factories discharge their refuse,
but which the corporations of these two towns have at last determined to cleanse
and convert into limpid streams. The volume of water brought down from the
moorlands by these rivulets is not very great, but it suffices to fill a dock crowded
with barges. It has been proposed by engineers to make Manchester a maritime
port by converting the Mersey and its tributary Irwell into a ship canal, up
which the tide would ascend as far as the present dock. The construction of
such a canal, which would have a length of 33 miles, a width of 220 and a depth
of 20 feet, it is assumed, would require an expenditure of close upon four millions.
If this scheme should ever be realised, Manchester will have no longercause to
envy Glasgow, its Scotch rival. For the present the metropolis of the cotton
;