Chapter V (5)

And in a moment, they knew not how, they found themselves sitting in the front of the Rock of Cleena, upon the little knoll where Roreen had so flatteringly accosted the "young leedy." Away they went again down to the shore, swam back across the river, and wandered away over hill and dale, till they ascended Sliabh Luchra, and lost themselves in the depths of the great forest that clothed its broad back. Here they sat down in a green glade, and began to consider what they should further do with themselves. At length {230} they agreed to build a little hut, and remain there for a few days, in order to look about the country. No sooner said than done.

To work they went, finished their hut beneath a spreading tree, and were soon regaling themselves on a young fawn they had killed as they descended the mountain. Next day they went out into the forest, killed a deer, brought him back to the hut, in order to prepare part of him for their dinner. Diarmid undertook the cooking for the first day, while his two younger brothers went out along the back of the mountain to kill more game. With the aid of a small pot, which they had borrowed from a forester at the northern part of the mountain, and a ladle that accompanied it, Diarmid began to cook the dinner, stirring the pieces of venison round and round over the fire, in order to have some broth ready at the return of his brothers. As he was stirring and tasting alternately with great industry, he heard a light footstep behind him, and on looking round, beheld sitting on one of the large mossy stones they used for a seat a little crabbed-looking boy, with a red head almost the color of scarlet, a red jacket, and tight-fitting trowsers of the same hue, which, reaching a little below the knee, left the fire-bedizened and equally rubicund legs and feet exposed in free luxury to the air. His face was handsomely formed, but brown and freckled, and he had a pair of dark, keen eyes, which seemed to pierce into the very soul of Diarmid as he sat gazing at him. There was a wild, elfish look about him altogether, as, with a vivacious twinkle of his acute eye, he saluted Diarmid politely, and asked him for a ladleful of the broth. Diarmid, however, in turning round from the pot, had spilt the contents of the ladle on his hand, burning it sorely, and was in consequence not in the most amiable humor.

"Give you a ladle of broth, indeed, you little weasel o' perdition!" exclaimed he. "Peg off out o' my house this minute, or I'll catch you by one o' them murtherin' legs o' yours, an' bate your brains out against one o' the stones!"

"I'm well acquainted with the cozy an' indestructible fact, that a man's house is his castle," said the little fellow, at the same time thrusting both his hands into his pockets, inclining his head slightly to one side, and looking up coolly at Diarmid; "but some o' that broth I must have, for three raisons. First, that all the wild-game o' the forest are mine as well as yours; second, that I'm a sthranger, an' you know that hospitality is a virthue in ould Ireland; an', third an' best, because you darn't refuse me! So, sit down there an' cool me a good rich ladleful, or, be the hole o' my coat! there'll be wigs on the green bethune you an' me afore you're much ouldher!"

"Ther's for your impidence, you gabblin' little riffin!" said Diarmid, making a furious kick at the imperturbable little intruder, who, however, evaded it by a nimble jump to one side; and then leaping up suddenly, before his assailant was aware, hit him right and left two stunning blows with his hard and diminutive fists in the eyes. Round and round hopped redhead, at each hop striking the luckless Diarmid right in the face, till at length, with one finishing blow, he brought him to the ground, stunned and senseless.

"There," he said, as he took a ladleful o' broth and began to cool it deliberately, "that's the most scientific facer I ever planted on a man's forehead in my life. I think he'll not refuse me the next time I ask him."

With that he drank off the broth at a draught, laid the ladle carefully in the pot, stuck his hands in his pockets, and jovially whistling up, "The cricket's rambles through the hob," he left the hut, and strutted with a light and cheerful heart into the forest.

When Diarmid's brothers returned, they found him just recovering from his swoon, with two delightful black eyes, and a nose of unusual dimensions. {231} He told them the cause of his mishap, at which they only laughed heartily, saying that he deserved it for allowing himself to be beaten by such an insignificant youngster. Next day, Diarmid and Roreen went out to hunt, leaving Donogh within to cook the dinner. When they returned, they found the ill-starred Donogh lying almost dead on the floor, with two black eyes far surpassing in beauty and magnitude those received on the preceding evening by his brother.

"Let me stay within to-morrow," said Roreen, "for 'tis my turn; an' if he has the perliteness o' payin' me a visit, I'll reward him for his condescension."

"Arrah!" said both his brothers, "is it a little traneen like you to be able for him, when he bate the two of us?"

"No matther," answered Roreen; "tis my turn, an' stay I will, if my eyes were to be oblitherated in my purricranium!"

And so, when the morrow came, Diarmid and Donogh went out to hunt, and Roreen Shouragh stayed within to cook the dinner. As the pot commenced boiling, Roreen kept a sharp eye around him for the expected visitor, whom he at length descried coming up the glade toward the door of the hut, whistling cheerfully as he came.

"Good-morrow, youngster!" said the chap as he entered, and made a most hilarious bow; "you seem to have the odor o' charity from your handsome face here, at laste it comes most aromatically from the pot, anyhow."

"Ah, then! good-morrow kindly, my blushin' little moss-rose!" said Roreen, answering the salutation with an equally ornamental inclination of his head--"welcome to the hall o' my fathers. P'r'aps you'd do me the thurminjous honor o' satin' that blazin' little carkiss o' yours on the stone fornent me there."

"With all the pleasure in the univarse," answered the other, seating himself; "but as the clay is most obsthreporously hot an' disthressin' to the dissolute traveller, p'r'aps you'd have the exthrame kindness o' givin' me a ladleful o' broth to refresh myself."

"Well," said Roreen, "I was always counted a livin' respectacle o' the hospitality of ould Ireland. Yet, although the first law is not to ask the name of a guest, in regard to the unmerciful way you thrated my brothers, I must make bowld, before I grant your request, to have the honor an' glory of hearin' your cognomen."

"With shuprame pleasure," answered the visitor. "My name, accordin' to the orthography o' Ogham characters, is Shaneen cus na Thinne, which, larnedly expounded, manes John with his Feet to the Fire. But the ferlosophers an' rantiquarians of ould Ireland, thracin' effect from cause, call me Fieryfoot, an' by that name I shall be proud to be addhressed by you at present."

"Well," rejoined Roreen, "it only shows their perfound knowlidge an' love for truth, to be able to make out such a knotty ploberm in derivations; an' so, out o' compliment to their oceans o' larnin', you'll get the broth; but," continued he, as he took up a ladleful and held it to cool, "as there are a few questions now and then thrublin' my ruminashins, p'r'aps you may be so perlite as to throw a flash o' lightnin' on them, while we're watin'. One is in nathral history. I've heerd that of late the hares sleep with one eye shut an' th' other open. What on earth is the raison of it?"

"That," answered Fieryfoot, "is aisily solvoluted. Tis on account o' the increase o' weasels, and their love for suckin' the blood o' hares in their sleep. So the hares, in ordher to be on their guard an' prevent it, sleep with only one eye at a time, an' when that's rested an' has slept enough, they open it an' shut the other!"

"The other," said Roreen, "is in asthronomy, an' thrubbles me most of all, sleepin' an' noddin', aitin' an' dhrinkin'. Why is it that the man in the moon always keeps a rapin'-hook in his hand, and never uses it?"

{232}

"Because," answered Fieryfoot, getting somewhat impatient, "because, you poor benighted crathure, he's not a man at all, but the image of a man painted over the door of Brian Airach's shebeen there, where those that set off on a lunarian ramble go in to refresh themselves, as I want to refresh myself with that ladle o' broth you're delayin' in your hand!"

"Oh! you'll get it fresh an' fastin'!" exclaimed Roreen, and with that he dashed the ladleful of scalding broth right into the face of Fieryfoot, who started up with a wild cry, and rushed half-blinded from the hut. Away went Roreen in hot pursuit after him, with the ladle in his hand, and calling out to him, with the most endearing names imaginable, to come back for another supply of broth--away down the glades, till at length, on the summit of a smooth, green little knoll, Fieryfoot suddenly disappeared. Roreen went to the spot, and found there a square aperture, just large enough to admit his body. He immediately went and cut a sapling with his knife, stuck it by the side of the aperture, and placed his cap on it for a mark, and then returned to the hut, and found his brothers just after coming in. He related all that happened, and they agreed to go together to the knoll after finishing their dinner. When the dinner was over, the three brothers went down to the knoll, and easily found out the aperture through which Fieryfoot had disappeared.

"An' now, what's to be done?" asked Diarmid.

"What's to be done, is it?" said Roreen; "why just to have me go down, as I'm the smallest--smallest in body I mane--for, to spake shupernathrally, my soul is larger than both of yurs put together; an', in the manetime, to have ye build another hut over the spot an' live there till I return with a power o' gold an' dimons, and oceans o' renown an' glory!"

With that he crept into the aperture, while his brothers busied themselves in drawing brambles and sticks to the spot in order to build a hut as he had directed. As Roreen descended, the passage began to grow more broad and lightsome, and at length he found himself on the verge of a delightful country, far more calm and beautiful than the one he had left. Here he took the first way that presented itself, and travelled on till he came to the crossing of three roads. He saw a large, dark-looking house, part of which he knew to be a smith's forge, from the smoke, and from the constant hammering that resounded from the inside. Roreen entered, and the first object that presented itself was Fieryfoot, as fresh and blooming as a trout, and roasting his red shins with the utmost luxuriance and happiness of heart before the blazing fire on the hob.

"Wisha, Roreen Shouragh," exclaimed Fieryfoot, starting from his seat, spitting on his hand for good luck, and then offering it with great cordiality, "you're as welcome as the flowers o' May! Allow me to offer you my congratulations, _ad infinitum_, for your superior cuteness in the art of circumwentin' your visitors. I prizhume you'll have no objection to be presented to the three workmen I keep in the house--the smith there, the carpenter, an' the mason. Roreen Shouragh, gentlemin, the only man in the world above that was able to circumwint your masther!"

"A cead mille failte, young gintleman!" said the three workmen in a breath.

Roreen bowed politely in acknowledgment.

"Any news from the worldt above?" asked the smith, as he rested his ponderous hammer on the anvil.

"Things are morthially dull," answered Roreen, giving a sly wink at Fieryfoot. "I've heard that the Danes are making a divarshin in Ireland; that a shower o' dimons fell in Dublin; that the moon is gettin' mowldy for want o' shinin'; and that there's a say in the west that is gradually becoming transmogrified into whiskey. I humbly hope that the latther intelligence {233} is unthrue, for if not, I'm afraid the whole worldt will become drunk in the twinklin' of a gooldfrinch's eye!"

"Mile, mile gloire!" exclaimed the three workmen, "but that's grate an' wondherful intirely! P'r'aps masther," continued they, addressing Fieryfoot, and smacking their lips at the thought of whiskey, "p'r'aps you'd have the goodness o' givin' us a few days' lave of absence!"

"Not at present," answered Fieryfoot; "industry is the soul o' pleasure, as the hawk said to the sparrow before he transported him to his stomach, so ye must now set to work an' make a sword, for I want to make my frind here a present as a compliment for his superior wisdom."

To work they went. The smith hammered out, tempered, and polished the blade, the carpenter fashioned the hilt, which the mason set with a brilliant row of diamonds; and the sword was finished instantly.

"An' now," said Fieryfoot, presenting the sword to Roreen, "let me have the immorthial pleasure o' presenting you with this. Take it and set off on your thravels. Let valior and magnanimity be your guide, and you'll come to glory without a horizintal bounds. In the manetime I'll wait here till you return."

"I accept it with the hottest gratitudinity an' gladness," said Roreen, taking the sword and running his eye critically along hilt and blade. "'Tis a darlin', handy sword; 'tis sharp, shinin', an' killin', as the sighin' lover said to his sweetheart's eyes, an' altogether 'tis the one that matches my experienced taste, for 'tis tough, an' light, and lumeniferous, as Nero said to his cimitar, whin he was preparin' to daycapitate the univarsal worldt wid one blow!"

Saying this, Roreen buckled the sword to his side, bade a ceremonious farewell to the polite Fieryfoot and his workmen, left the house, and proceeded on his adventures. He took the west and broader road that led by the forge, and travelled on gaily till night. For seven days he travelled thus, meeting various small adventures by the way, and getting through them with his usual light-heartedness, till at length he saw a huge dark castle before him, standing on a rock over a solitary lake. He accosted an old man by the way-side, who told him that a huge giant of unusual size, strength, and ferocity dwelt there, and that he had kept there in thrall, for the past year and a day, a beautiful princess, expecting that in the end she'd give her consent to marry him. The old peasant told him also that the giant had two brothers, who dwelt far away in their castles, and that they were the strangest objects ever seen by mortal eyes; one being a valiant dwarf as broad as he was long, and the other longer than he was broad, for he was tall as the giant, but so slightly formed that he was designated by the inhabitants of the country round Snohad na Dhial, or the Devil's Needle. Roreen thanked the old man with great urbanity, and proceeded on his way toward the castle. When he came to the gate, he knocked as bold as brass, and demanded admittance. He was quickly answered by a tremendous voice from the inside, which demanded what he wanted.

"Let me in, ould steeple," said Roreen; "I'm a poor disthressed boy that's grown wary o' the worldt on account o' my fatness, an' I'm come to offer myself as a volunthary male for your voracious stomach!"

At this the gate flew open with a loud clang, and Roreen found himself in the great court-yard of the castle, confronting the giant. The giant was licking his lips expectantly while opening the gate, but seemed now not a little disappointed as he looked upon the spare, wiry form standing before him.

"If you're engaged, ould cannibal," said Roreen again, "in calkalatin' a gasthernomical ploberm, as I'm aweer you are, by the way you're lookin' at me, allow me perlitely to help you in hallucidatin' it. In the first place, if {234} you intend to put me in a pie, I must tell you that you'll not get much gravy from my carkiss, an' in the next, if you intend to ate me on the spot, raw, I must inform you that you'll find me as hard as a Kerry dimon, an' stickin' in your throat, before you're half acquainted with the politics of your abdominal kingdom!"

As an answer to this the giant did precisely what Roreen Shouragh expected he would do. He stooped down, caught him up with his monstrous hand, intending to chop off his head with the first bite; but Roreen, the moment he approached his broad, hairy chest, pulled suddenly out the sword presented to him by Fiery foot, and drew it across the giant's windpipe, with as scientific a cut as ever was given by any champion at the battle of Gaura, Clontarf, or of any other place on the face of the earth. The giant did not give the usual roar given by a giant in the act of being killed. How could he, when his windpipe was cut? He only fell down simply by the gate of his own castle, and died without a groan. Roreen, by way of triumph, leaped upon his carcass, and with a light heart cut a few nimble capers thereon, and then proceeded on his explorations into the castle. There he found the beautiful princess sad and forlorn, whom he soon relieved from her apprehensions of further thraldom. She told him that she was not the only lady whose wrongs were unredressed in that strange country, for that the two remaining brothers of the giant, to wit, the dwarf and the Devil's Needle, had kept, during her time of thrall, her two younger sisters in an equally cruel bondage.

"An' now, my onrivalled daisy," said Roreen, after some conversation had passed between them, "allow me, while I'm in the humor for performin' deeds o' valior, to thramp off an' set them free!"

"But," said the princess, "am I to be left behind pining in this forlorn dungeon of a castle?"

"Refulgint leedy," answered Roreen, "a pair of eyes like yours, when purferrin' a request, are arrisistible, but this Kerry-dimon' heart o' mine is at present onmovable; and in ferlosophy, when an arrisistible affeer conglomerates against an onmovable one, nothin' occurs, an' so I must have the exthrame bowldness of asking you to stay where you are till I come back, for 'tis always the maxim of an exparienced an' renowned gineral not to oncumber himself with too much baggage when settin' out on his advinthures!"

And so the young princess consented to stay, and Roreen, with many bows and compliments, took his leave. For three days he travelled, till at length he espied the castle of the dwarf towering on the summit of a great hill. He climbed the hill as fast as his nimble legs could carry him, blew the horn at the gate, and defied the dwarf to single combat. To work they went. The skin of the dwarf was as hard and tough as that of a rhinoceros, but at length Roreen's sword found a passage through it, and the dwarf fell dead by his own gate. Roreen went in, brought the good news of her sister's liberation to the lady, and after directing her to remain where she was till his return, set forward again. For three days more he travelled, till he came to the shore of a sea, where he saw the castle of Snohad na Dhial towering high above the waves. He climbed up the rock on which the castle stood, found the gate open, and whistling the romantic pastoral of "The piper in the meadow straying," he jovially entered the first door he met. On he went, through room after room, and saw no one, till at last he came before an exceedingly lofty door, with a narrow and perpendicular slit in it, extending almost from threshold to lintel. He peeped in through the open slit, and beheld inside the most beautiful young lady his eyes ever rested upon. She was weeping, and seemed sorely troubled. Roreen opened the door, presented himself before her, and told her how he had liberated her {235} sisters. In return she told him how that very day she was to be married to Snohad na Dhial, and wept, as she further related that it was out of the question to think of vanquishing him, for that he was as tall as the giant, yet so slight that the slit in the door served him always for an entrance, but then he was beyond all heroes strong, and usually killed his antagonist by knotting his long limbs around him and squeezing him to death.

"No matther," said Roreen. "I'll sing a song afther my victory, as the gamecock said to the piper. An' now, most delightful an' bloomin' darlint o' the worldt, this purriliginious heart o' mine is melted at last with the conshumin' flame o' love. Say, then, the heart-sootherin' an' merlifluous word that you'll have me, an' your thrubbles are over in the twinklin'--"

"Not over so soon!" interrupted a loud, shrill voice behind them, and Roreen, turning round, beheld Snohad na Dhial entering at the slit, with deadly rage and jealousy in his fiery eyes. Snohad, however, in his haste to get in and fall upon Roreen, got his middle in some way or other entangled in the slit, and in his struggles to free himself, his feet lilted upward, and there he hung for a few moments, inward and outward, like the swaying beam of a balance. For a few moments only; for Roreen, running over, with one blow of his faithful sword on the waist cut him in two, and down fell both halves of Snohad na Dhial as dead as a door-nail. After this Roreen got the heart-sootherin' answer he so gallantly implored. He then bethought himself of returning. After a few weeks he found himself with the three sisters, and with a cavalcade of horses laden with the most precious diamonds, pearls, and other treasures belonging to the three castles, in front of the forge where he had met Fieryfoot, and talking merrily to that worthy.

"An' now," said Fieryfoot, after he had complimented the ladies on their beauty, and Roreen on his success and bravery, "I am about to give my three workmen lave of absence. But they must work seven days for you first. Then they may go on their peregrinations about ould Ireland. Farewell. Give my ondeniable love to the ladle, and remember me to your brothers balligerently!"

With that the two friends embraced, on which Fieryfoot drew out a small whistle and blew a tune, which set Roreen Shouragh and the three princesses into a pleasant sleep; on awakening from which they found themselves by the side of the little hut on the knoll, with the three workmen beneath them, holding the horses and guarding their loads of treasure. Roreen's two brothers had just returned from the chase, and were standing near them in mute wonderment at the spectacle. After some brief explanations, the whole cavalcade set out on their journey home, and travelled on till they came to the hut of the lonely widow on the banks of the Clydagh. It was nightfall when they reached the place. Roreen told the three workmen that he wanted to have a castle built on the meadow beside the hut, and then went in and embraced his mother. The workmen went to the meadow, and when the next morning dawned, had a castle of unexampled strength and beauty built for Roreen and his intended bride. The two succeeding mornings saw two equally splendid castles built for the two brothers and their brides elect, for they were about to be married to the two elder princesses. By the next morning after that they had a castle finished for Roreen's mother. On the second morning afterward they had a town built, and at length, on the seventh morning, when Roreen went out, he found both castles and town' enclosed by a strong wall, with ramparts, gateways, and every other necessary appliance of defence. The three workmen then took their leave, and by the loud smacking of their lips as they departed, Roreen knew that they were going off to the west in search of the "say" of whiskey. After this the three {236} brothers were married to the three lovely princesses, mercenary soldiers flocked in from every quarter, and took service under their banners; the inhabitants of the surrounding country removed into the town, and matters went on gaily and prosperously. The name of Roreen's wife was Mourne Blanaid, or the Blooming, and on a great festival day got up for the purpose, he called the town Mourne, in honor of her. In a pitched battle they defeated and killed the slayer of their father, and drove his followers out of their patrimony, and after that they lived in glory and renown till their death.

For centuries after the town of Mourne flourished, still remaining in possession of the race of the Mac Carthys. At length the Normans came and laid their mail-clad hands upon it. In the reign of King John, Alexander de St. Helena founded a preceptory for Knights Templars near it, the ruins of which stand yet in forlorn and solitary grandeur beside the little river. Still the town flourished and throve, though many a battle was fought within it, and around its gray walls, till at length, according to Spenser, Murrogh na Ranagh, prince of Thomond, burst out like a fiery flame from his fastnesses in Clare, overran all Munster, burnt almost every town in it that had fallen into the possession of the English, and among the rest Mourne, whose woeful burning did not content him, for he destroyed it altogether, scarcely leaving one stone standing there upon another. And now only a few mounds remain to show the spot where Roreen Shouragh got his town built, and where he ruled so jovially.

And so, gentle reader, if you look with me to the history of Troy, Rome, the battle of Ventry Harbor, the Pyramids, or Tadmor in the Desert, I think you will say that there is none of them so clear, so circumstantial, and so trustworthy as the early history of the old town of Mourne.

----

{237}

HANS EULER.

FROM THE GERMAN OF J. G. SEIDL.

"Hark, child--again that knocking! Go, fling wide the door, I pray;
Perchance 'tis some poor pilgrim who has wandered from his way.
Now save thee, gallant stranger! Sit thou down and share our cheer:
Our bread is white and wholesome see! our drink is fresh and clear."

"I come not here your bread to share, nor of your drink to speak.
Your name?"--"Hans Euler."--"So! 'tis well: it is your blood I seek.
Know that through many a weary year I've sought you for a foe:
I had a goodly brother once: 'twas you who laid him low.

"And as he bit the dust, I vowed that soon or late on you
His death should be avenged; and mark! that oath I will keep true."
"I slew him; but in quarrel just. I fought him hand to hand:
Yet, since you would avenge his fall,--I'm ready; take your stand.

"But I war not in my homestead, by this hearth whereon I tread;
Not in sight of these--my dear ones--for whose safety I have bled.
My daughter, reach me down yon sword,--the same that laid him low;
And if I ne'er come back again, Tyrol has sons enow."

So forth they fared together, up the glorious Alpine way,
Where newly now the kindling east led on the golden day.
The sun that mounted with them, as he rose in all his pride,
Still saw the stranger toiling on, Hans Euler for his guide.

They climbed the mountain summit; and behold! the Alpine world
Showed clear and bright before them, 'neath the mists that upward curled.
Below them, calm and happy, lay the valley in her rest,
With the chalets in her arms, and with their dwellers on her breast.

Amidst were sparkling waters; giant chasms, scarred and riven;
Vast, crowning woods; and over all, the pure, blest air of heaven:
And, sacred in the sight of God, where peace her treasures spread,
On every hearth, on every home, the soul of freedom shed!

Both gazed in solemn silence down. The stranger stayed his hand.
Hans Euler gently pointed to his own beloved land:
"'Twas this thy brother threatened; such a wrong might move me well.
'Twas in such a cause I struggled:--'twas for such a fault he fell."

The stranger paused: then, turning, looked Hans Euler in the face;
The arm that would have raised the sword fell powerless in its place.
"You slew him. Was it, then, for this--for home and fatherland?
Forgive me! 'Twas a righteous cause. Hans Euler, there's my hand!"

ELEANORA L. HERVEY.

{238}

From All the Year Round.

THE MODERN GENIUS OF THE STREAMS.

Water to raise corn from the seed, to clothe the meadow with its grass, and to fill the land with fruit and flowers; water to lie heaped in fantastic clouds, to make the fairy-land of sunset, and to spread the arch of mercy in the rainbow; water that kindles our imagination to a sense of beauty; water that gives us our meat, and is our drink, and cleans us of dirt and disease, and is our servant in a thousand great and little ways--it is the very juice and essence of man's civilization. And so, whether we shall drag over cold water, or let hot water drag us, is one way of putting the question between canal and steam communication for conveyance of our heavy traffic. The canal-boat uses its water cold without, the steam-engine requires it hot within. Before hot water appeared in its industrial character to hiss off the cold, canals had all the glory to themselves. They are not yet hissed off their old stages and cat-called into contempt by the whistle of the steam-engine, for canal communication still has advantages of its own, and canal shares are powers in the money market.

Little more than a century ago, not only were there neither canals nor railroads in this country, but the common high-roads were about the worst in Europe. Corn and wool were sent to market over those bad roads on horses' or bullocks' backs, and the only coal used in the inland southern counties was carried on horseback in sacks for the supply of the blacksmiths' forges. Water gave us our over-sea commerce, that came in and went out by way of our tidal rivers; and the step proposed toward the fostering of our home industries was a great one when it occurred to somebody to imitate nature, by erecting artificial rivers that should flow whereever we wished them to flow, and should be navigable along their whole course for capacious, flat-bottomed carrying-boats.

The first English canal, indeed, was constructed as long as three hundred years ago, at Exeter, by John Trew, a native of Glamorganshire, who enabled the traders of Exeter to cancel the legacy of the spite of an angry Countess of Devon, who had, nearly three hundred years before that time, stopped the ascent of sea-going vessels to Exeter by forming a weir across the Exe at Topham. Trew contrived, to avoid the obstruction, a canal from Exeter to Topham, three miles long, with a lock to it. John Trew ruined himself in the service of an ungrateful corporation.

After this time, improvements went no further than the clearing out of some channels of natural water-communication, until the time of James Brindley, the father of the English canal system.

James Brindley was born in the year 1716, the third of the reign of George the First, in a cottage in the parish of Wormhill, midway between the remote hamlets of the High Peak of Derby. There his father, more devoted to shooting, hunting, and bull-running, than to his work as a cottier, cultivated the little croft he rented, got into bad company and poverty, and left his children neglected and untaught. The idle man had an industrious wife, who taught the children, of whom James was the eldest, what little she knew; but they must all help to earn as soon as they were able, and James Brindley earned wages at any ordinary laborer's work that he could get until he was seventeen years old. {239} He was a lad clever with his knife, who made little models of mills, and set them to work in mill-streams of his own contrivance. The machinery of a neighboring grist-mill was his especial delight, and had given the first impulse to his modellings. He and his mother agreed that he should bind himself, whenever he could, to a millwright; and at the age of seventeen he did, after a few weeks' trial, become apprentice for seven years to Abraham Bennett, wheelwright and millwright, at the village of Sutton, near Macclesfield, which was the market-town of Brindley's district.

The millwrights were then the only engineers; they worked by turns at the foot-lathe, the carpenter's bench, and the anvil; and, in country places where there was little support for division of labor, they had to find skill or invention to meet any demand on mechanical skill. Bennett was not a sober man, his journeymen were a rough set, and much of the young apprentice's time was at first occupied in running for beer. He was taught little, and had to find out everything for himself, which he did but slowly; so that, during some time, he passed with his master for a stupid bungler, only fit for the farm-work from which he had been taken. But, after two years of this sort of pupilage, a fire having injured some machinery in a small silk-mill at Macclesfield, Brindley was sent to bring away the damaged pieces; and, by his suggestions on that occasion, he showed to Mr. Milner, the mill superintendent, an intelligence that caused his master to be applied to for Brindley's aid in a certain part of the repairs. He was unwillingly sent, worked under the encouragement of the friendly superintendent with remarkable ability, and was surprised that his master and the other workmen seemed to be dissatisfied with his success. When they chaffed him, at the supper celebrating the completion of the work, his friend Milner offered to wager a gallon of the best ale that, before the lad's apprenticeship was out, he would be a cleverer workman than any of them there present, master or man. This was a joke against Brindley among his fellow-workmen; but in another year they found "the young man Brindley" specially asked for when the neighboring millers needed repairs of machinery, and sometimes he was chosen in preference to the master himself. Bennett asked "the young man Briudley" where he had learnt his skill in mill-work, but he could tell no more than that it "came natural like." He even suggested and carried out improvements, especially in the application of the water-power, and worked so substantially well, that his master said to him one day, "Jem, if thou goes on i' this foolish way o' workin', there will be very little trade left to be done when thou comes oot o' thy time: thou knaws firmness o' wark's h' ruin o' trade."

But presently Jem's "firmness o' wark" was the saving of his master. Bennett got a contract to set up a paper-mill on the river Dane, upon the model of a mill near Manchester. Bennett went to examine the Manchester mill, brought back a confused and beery notion of it, and, proceeding with the job, got into the most hopeless bewilderment. An old hand, who had looked in on the work, reported, over his drink at the nearest public-house, that the job was a farce, and that Abraham Bennett was only throwing away his employer's money. Next Saturday, after his work, young Jem Brindley disappeared. He was just of age, and it was supposed he had taken it into his head to leave his master and begin life on his own account. But on Monday morning, there he was at his work, with his coat off, and the whole duty to be done clear in his head. He had taken on Saturday night a twenty-five mile walk to the pattern mill, near Manchester. On Sunday morning he had asked leave of its proprietor to go in and examine it. He had spent {240} some hours on Sunday in the study of its machinery, and then had walked the twenty-five miles back, to resume his work and save his master from a failure that would have been disastrous to his credit. The conduct of the work was left to him; he undid what was amiss, and proceeded with the rest so accurately, that the contract was completed within the appointed time, to the complete satisfaction of all persons concerned. After that piece of good service, Bennett left to James Brindley the chief care over his business. When Bennett died, Brindley carried on to completion all work then in hand, and wound up the accounts for the benefit of his old master's family. That done, he set up in business on his own account at the town of Leek, in Staffordshire; he was then twenty-six years old, having served seven years as an apprentice and two years as journeyman.

Leek was then but a small market-town, with a few grist-mills, and Brindley had no capital; but he made himself known beyond Leek as a reliable man, whose work was good and durable, who had invention at the service of his employers, and who always finished a job within the stipulated time. He did not confine himself to mill-work, but was ready to undertake all sorts of machinery connected with the draining of mines, the pumping of water, the smelting of iron and copper, for which a demand was then rising, and became honorably known to his neighbors as "the Schemer." At first he had no journeyman or apprentice, and he cut the tree for his own timber. While working as an apprentice, he had taught himself to write in a clumsy, half-illegible way--he never learnt to spell--and when he had been thirteen years in business, he would still charge an employer his day's work at two shillings for cutting a big tree, for a mill-shaft or for other use. When he was called to exercise his skill at a distance upon some machinery, he added a charge of sixpence a day for extra expenses.

When the brothers John and Thomas Wedgwood, potters in a small way at the outset of their famous career, desired to increase the supply of flint-powder, they called "the Schemer" to their aid, and the success of the flint-mill Brindley then erected brought him business in the potteries from that time forward.

About this time, also, a Manchester man was being married to a young lady of mark in the potteries, and, during the wedding festivities, conversation once turned on the cleverness of the young millwright of Leek. The Manchester man wondered whether he was clever enough to get the water out of some hopelessly drowned coal mines of his, and thought he should like to see him. Brindley was sent for, told the case and its hitherto insuperable difficulties, went into a brown study, then suddenly brightened up, and told in what way he thought that, without great expense, the difficulty might be conquered. The gist of his plan was to use the fall of the river Irwell, that formed one boundary of the estate, and pump the water from the pits by means of the greater power of the water in the river. His suggestion was thought good, and, being set to work upon this job, he drove a tunnel through six hundred yards of solid rock, and by the tunnel brought the river down upon the breast of an immense water-wheel, fixed in a chamber thirty feet below the surface of the ground; the water, when it had turned the wheel, was carried on into the lower level of the Irwell. That wheel, with its pumps, working night and day, soon cleared the drowned outworkings of the mine; and for the invention and direction of this valuable engineering work, he seems only to have charged his workman's wages of two shillings a day.

An engineer from London had been brought down to superintend the building of a new silk-mill at {241} Congleton, and Brindley was employed under him to make the water-wheel and do the common work of his trade. The engineer from London got his work into a mess, and at last was obliged to confess his inability to carry out his plan. "The Schemer" Brindley was applied to by the perplexed proprietor. Could he put the confusion straight? James Brindley asked to see the plans; but the great engineer refused to show them to a common millwright. "Well, then," said Brindley to the proprietor of the mill, "tell me exactly what you want the machinery to do, and I will try to contrive what will do it. But you must leave me free to work in my own way." He was told the results desired, and not only achieved them, but achieved much more, adding new contrivances, which afterward proved of the greatest value.

After this achievement, Brindley was employed by the now prospering potters to build flint-mills of more power upon a new plan of his own. One of the largest was that built for Mr. Baddely, of which work there is record in such trade entries of his as "March 15, 1757. With Mr. Baddely to Matherso about a now" (new) "flint-mill upon a windey day 1 day 3s. 6d. March 19 draing a plann 1 day 2s. 6d. March 23 draing a plann and to sat out the wheelrace 1 day 4s."

At this time Brindley is also exercising his wit on an attempt at an improved steam-engine; but though his ideas are good, it is hard to bring them into continuously good working order, and after the close of entries about it in his memorandum-book, when it seems to have broken down for a second time, he underlines the item "to Run about a Drinking Is. 6d." But he confined his despair to the loss of a day and the expenditure of eighteen pence. Not long afterward he had developed a patent of his own, and erected, in 1763, for the Walker Colliery at Newcastle, a steam-engine wholly of iron, which was pronounced the most "complete and noble piece of iron-work" that had up to that time been produced. But the perfecting of the steam-engine was then safe in the hands of Watt, and Brindley had already turned into his own path as the author of our English canal system.

The young Duke of Bridgewater, vexed in love by the frailty of fair woman, had abjured interest in their sex, had gone down to his estate of Worsley, on the borders of Chat Moss, and, to give himself something more wholesome to think about than the sisters Gunning and their fortunes, conferred with John Gilbert, his land steward, as to the possibility of cutting a canal by which the coals found upon his Worsley estate might be readily taken to market at Manchester. Manchester then was a rising town, of which the manufacturers were yet unaided by the steam-engine, and there was no coal smoke but that which arose from household fires. The roads out of Manchester were so bad as to be actually closed in winter, and in summer the coal, sold at the pit mouth by the horse-load, was conveyed on horses' backs at an addition to its cost of nine or ten shillings a ton.

When the duke discussed with Gilbert old abandoned and new possible schemes of water conveyance for his Worsley coal, Gilbert advised the calling in of the ingenious James Brindley of Leek, "the Schemer." When the duke came into contact with Brindley, he at once put trust in him, and gave him the direction of the proposed work; whereupon he was requested to base his advice upon what he enters in his memorandum-book of jobs done, as an "ochilor," (ocular) "servey or a ricconitering."

Brindley examined the ground, and formed his own plan. He was against carrying the canal down into Irwell by a flight of locks, and so up again on the other side to the proposed level, but counselled carrying the canal by solid embankments and a stone aqueduct right over the river upon one {242} level throughout. The duke accepted his opinion, and had plans prepared for a new application to parliament, Brindley often staying with him at work and in consultation for weeks together, while still travelling to and fro in full employment upon mills, water-wheels, cranes, fire-engines, and other mechanical work. Small as his pay was, he lived frugally. He had by this time even saved a little money, and gained credit enough to be able, by borrowing from a friend at Leek, to pay between five and six hundred pounds for a fourth share of an estate at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, supposed by him to be full of minerals.

The Duke of Bridgewater obtained his act in the year 1760, but the bold and original part of Brindley's scheme, which many ridiculed as madness, caused the duke much anxiety. In England there had never been so great an aqueduct, but the scheme was not only for the carrying of water in a water-tight trunk of earth over an embankment, but also for the carrying of ships on a bridge of water over water. Brindley had no misgivings. To allay the duke's fears, he suggested calling in and questioning another engineer, who surprised the man of genius by ending an adverse report thus: "I have often heard of castles an the air; but never before saw where any of them were to be erected."

The duke, however, with all his hesitation, had most faith in the head of James Brindley, bade him go on in his own way, and resolved to run the risk of failure. And so, on a bridge of three arches, the canal was carried over the Irwell by the Barton aqueduct, thirty-nine feet above the river. The water was confined within a puddled channel, to prevent leakage, and the work is at this day as sound as it was when first constructed. For the safe carrying of water along the top of an earthen embankment, Brindley had relied upon the retaining powers of clay puddle. It was by help also of clay puddle that he carried the weight of the embankment safe over the ooze of Trafford Moss.

With great ingenuity, also, Brindley provided for the crossing of his canal by streams intercepting its course, without breach of his rule that it is unsafe to let such waters freely mix with the canal stream. Thus, to provide for the free passage of the Medlock without causing a rush into the canal, an ingenious form of weir was contrived, over which its waters flowed into a lower level, and thence down a well several yards deep, leading to a subterranean passage by which the stream was passed into the Irwell, near at hand. Arthur Young, who saw Brindley's canal soon after it was opened, said that "the whole plan of these works shows a capacity and extent of mind which foresees difficulties, and invents remedies in anticipation of possible evils. The connection and dependence of the parts upon each other are happily imagined; and all are exerted in concert, to command by every means the wished-for success." At the Worsley end Brindley constructed a basin, into which coal was brought from different workings of the mine by a subterranean water channel. Brindley also invented cranes for the more ready loading of the boats, laid down within the mines a system of underground railways leading from the face of the coal where the miners worked, to the wells that he had made at different points in the tunnels for shooting the coal down into the boats waiting below. He drained and ventilated with a water-bellows the lower parts of the mine. He improved the barges, invented water-weights, raising dams, riddles to wash the coal for the forges. At the Manchester end Brindley made equally ingenious arrangements for the easy delivery of the coal at the top of Castle Hill. At every turn in the work his inventive genius was felt. When the want of lime for the masonry was a serious impediment, Brindley discovered how to make, of a useless, unadhesive lime-marl, by tempering it and casting it in {243} moulds before burning, an excellent lime, a contrivance that alone saved the duke several thousands of pounds cost. When the water was let in, and the works everywhere stood firm, people of fashion flocked to see Brindley's canal, as "perhaps the greatest artificial curiosity in the world:" and writers spoke in glowing terms of the surprise with which they saw several barges of great burden drawn by a single mule or horse along a "river hung in the air," over another river flowing beneath.

As for Manchester, with the price of coal reduced one half, it was ready to make the best use of the steam-engine when it was established as the motive-power in our factories.

Within two months of the day, seventeenth of July, 1761, when the first boat-load of coals travelled over the Barton viaduct, Brindley's notes testify that he was at Liverpool "recconitoring" and by the end of September he was levelling for a proposed extension of his canal from Manchester to Liverpool, by joining it with the Mersey, eight miles below Warrington Bridge, whence there is a natural tideway to Liverpool, about fifteen miles distant. At that time there was not even a coach communication over the bad roads between Manchester and Liverpool, the first stage-coach having been started six years later, when it required six, and sometimes eight horses to pull it the thirty miles along the ruts and through the sloughs. The coach started from Liverpool early in the morning, breakfasted at Prescot, dined at Warrington, and reached Manchester by supper-time. From Manchester to Liverpool it made the return journey next day. The Duke of Bridgewater's proposed canal was strongly opposed as an antagonist interest by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company. The canal promised to take freights at half the price charged by the Navigation Company. A son of the Earl of Derby took the part of the "Old Navigators," and as the Duke of Bridgewater was a Whig, Brindley had to enter in his note-book that "the Toores" (Tories) had "mad had" (made head) "agane ye Duk." But at last his entry was: "ad a grate Division of 127 fort Duk 98 nos for t e Duke 29 Me Jorete," and the Duke's cause prospered during the rest of the contest.

Brindley bought a new suit of clothes to grace his part as principal engineering witness for the canal, and having upset his mind for some days by going to see Garrick play Richard the Third, (wherefore he declared against all further indulgence in that sort of excitement), he went to the committee-room duly provided with a bit of chalk in his pocket, and made good the saying that originated from his clear way of showing what he meant, upon the floor of the committee-room, that "Brindley and chalk would go through the world." When asked to produce a drawing of a proposed bridge, he said he had none, but could immediately get a model. Whereupon he went out and bought a large cheese, which he brought into the committee-room and cut into two equal parts, saying, "Here is my model." The two halves of the cheese represented the two arches of his bridge, the rest of the work connected with them he built with paper, with books, or with whatever he found ready to hand. Once when he had repeatedly talked about "puddling," some of the members wished to know what puddling was. Brindley sent out for a lump of clay, hollowed it into a trough, poured water in, and showed that it leaked out. Then he worked up the clay with water, going through the process of puddling in miniature, again made a trough of the puddled clay, filled it with water, and showed that it was water-tight. "Thus it is," he said, "that I form a water-tight trunk to carry water over rivers and valleys, wherever they cross the path of the canal."