ch is
exported in the form of coal to all parts of the world. Newcastle is in
many respects a town of singular and curious interest, especially in its
older parts, which are full of crooked lanes and narrow streets, wynds,
and chares, {4} formed by tall, antique houses, rising tier above tier
along the steep northern bank of the Tyne, as the similarly precipitous
streets of Gateshead crowd the opposite shore.

All over the coal region, which extends from the Coquet to the Tees,
about fifty miles from north to south, the surface of the soil exhibits
the signs of extensive underground workings. As you pass through the
country at night, the earth looks as if it were bursting with fire at
many points; the blaze of coke-ovens, iron-furnaces, and coal-heaps
reddening the sky to such a distance that the horizon seems to be a
glowing belt of fire.

From the necessity which existed for facilitating the transport of coals
from the pits to the shipping places, it is easy to understand how the
railway and the locomotive should have first found their home in such a
district as we have thus briefly described. At an early period the coal
was carried to the boats in panniers, or in sacks upon horses' backs.
Then carts were used, to facilitate the progress of which tramways of
flag-stone were laid down. This led to the enlargement of the vehicle,
which became known as a waggon, and it was mounted on four wheels instead
of two. A local writer about the middle of the seventeenth century says,
"Many thousand people are engaged in this trade of coals; many live by
working of them in the pits; and many live by conveying them in waggons
and wains to the river Tyne."

Still further to facilitate the haulage of the waggons, pieces of
planking were laid parallel upon wooden sleepers, or imbedded in the
ordinary track, by which friction was still further diminished. It is
said that these wooden rails were first employed by one Beaumont, about
1630; and on a road thus laid, a single horse was capable of drawing a
large loaded waggon from the coal-pit to the shipping staith. Roger
North, in 1676, found the practice had become extensively adopted, and he
speaks of the large sums then paid for way-leaves; that is, the
permission granted by the owners of lands lying between the coal-pit and
the river-side to lay down a tramway between the one and the other. A
century later, Arthur Young observed that not only had these roads become
greatly