anufacturing county of England for cotton and woollen
spinning and weaving is Lancashire. Liverpool is the seaport for the
vast aggregation of manufacturers who own the huge mills of Manchester,
Salford, Warrington, Wigan, Oldham, Rochdale, Bolton, Blackburn,
Preston, and a score of other towns, whose operatives work into yarns
and fabrics the millions of bales of cotton and wool that come into the
Mersey. The warehouse and factory, with the spinners' cottages and the
manufacturers' villas, make up these towns, almost all of modern growth,
and the busy machinery and smoking chimneys leave little chance for
romance in Southern Lancashire. It was in this section that trade first
compelled the use of modern improvements: here were used the earliest
steam-engines; here labored Arkwright to perfect the spinning machinery,
and Stephenson to build railways. To meet the necessities of
communication between Liverpool and Manchester, the first canal was dug
in England, and this was followed afterwards by the first experimental
railway; the canal was constructed by Brindley, and was called the
"Grand Trunk Canal," being twenty-eight miles long from Manchester to
the Mersey River, at Runcorn above Liverpool, and was opened in 1767.
The railway was opened in 1830; the odd little engine, the "Rocket,"
then drew an excursion-train over it, and the opening was marred by an
accident which killed Joseph Huskisson, one of the members of Parliament
for Liverpool. Let us follow this railway, which now carries an enormous
traffic out of Liverpool, eastward along the valley of the Mersey past
Warrington, with its quaint old timbered market-house, and then up its
tributary, the Irwell, thirty-one miles to Manchester.

MANCHESTER.

The chief manufacturing city of England has not a striking effect upon
the visitor as he approaches it. It is scattered over a broad surface
upon a gently undulating plain, and its suburbs straggle out into the
country villages, which it is steadily absorbing in its rapid growth;
the Irwell passes in a winding course through the city, receiving a
couple of tributaries; this river divides Manchester from Salford, but a
dozen bridges unite them. No city in England has had such rapid growth
as Manchester in this century; it has increased from about seventy
thousand people at the beginning of the century to over half a million
now; and this is all the effect of the development of manufacturing
industry. Yet Manchester