The Losses and Gains by Speed--The Railway Track and Turnpike Road:
Their Sceneries Compared.
CHAPTER II. First Day's Observations and Enjoyment--Rural Foot-
paths; Visit to Tiptree Farm--Alderman Mechi's Operations--
Improvements Introduced, Decried and Adopted--Steam Power, Under-
draining, Deep Tillage, Irrigation--Practical Results.
CHAPTER III. English and American Birds--The Lark and its Song.
CHAPTER IV. Talk with an Old Man on the Way--Old Houses in
England--Their American Relationships--English Hedges and Hedge-row
Trees--Their Probable Fate--Change of Rural Scenery without them.
CHAPTER V. A Footpath Walk and its Incidents--Harvest Aspects--
English and American Skies--Humbler Objects of Contemplation--The
Donkey: Its Uses and Abuses.
CHAPTER VI. Hospitalities of "Friends"--Harvest Aspects:
English Country Inns; their Appearance, Names and Distinctive
Characteristics--The Landlady, Waiter, Chambermaid and Boots--Extra
Fees and Extra Comforts.
CHAPTER VII. Light of Human Lives--Photographs and Biographs--The
late Jonas Webb, his Life, Labors and Memory.
CHAPTER VIII. Threshing Machine--Flower Show--The Hollyhock and
its Suggestions--The Law of Co-operative Activities in Vegetable,
Animal, Mental and Moral Life.
CHAPTER IX. Visit to a Three-Thousand-Acre Farm--Samuel Jonas;
His Agricultural Operations, their Extent, Success and General
Economy.
CHAPTER X. Royston and its Specialities--Entertainment in a
Small Village--St. Ives--Visits to Adjoining Villages--A Fen-Farm--
Capital Invested in English and American Agriculture Compared--
Allotments and Garden Tenantry--Barley Grown on Oats.
CHAPTER XI. The Miller of Houghton--An Hour in Huntingdon--Old
Houses--Whitewashed Tapestry and Works of Art--"The Old Mermaid" and
"The Green Man"--Talk with Agricultural Laborers--Thoughts on their
Condition, Prospects and Possibilities.
CHAPTER XII. Farm Game--Hallett Wheat--Oundle--Country Bridges--
Fotheringay Castle--Queen Mary's Imprisonment and Execution--
Burghley House: The Park, Avenues, Elms and Oaks--Thoughts on
Trees, English and American.
CHAPTER XIII. Walk to Oakham--The English and American Spring--The
English Gentry--A Specimen of the Class--Melton Mowbray and its
Specialities--Belvoir Vale and its Beauty--Thoughts on the Blind
Painter.
CHAPTER XIV. Nottingham and its Characteristics--Newstead Abbey--
Mansfield--Talk in a Blacksmith's Shop--Chesterfield, Chatsworth and
Haddon Hall--Aristocratic Civilisation, Present and Past.
CHAPTER XV. Sheffield and its Individuality--The Country, Above
Ground and Under Ground--Wakefield and Leeds--Wharf Vale--Farnley
Hall--Harrogate; Ripley Castle; Ripon; Conservatism of Country
Towns--Fountain Abbey; Studley Park--Rievaulx Abbey--Lord
Faversham's Shorthorn Stock.
CHAPTER XVI. Hexham--The North Tyne--Border-Land and its
Suggestions--Hawick--Teviotdale--Birth-place of Leyden--Melrose and
Dryburgh Abbeys--Abbotsford: Sir Walter Scott; Homage to his
Genius--The Ferry and the Oar-Girl--New Farm Steddings--Scenery of
the Tweed Valley--Edinburgh and its Characteristics.
CHAPTER XVII. Loch Leven--Its Island Castle--Straths--Perth--
Salmon-breeding--Thoughts on Fish-farming--Dunkeld--Blair Atholl--
Ducal Tree-planter--Strathspey and its Scenery--The Roads--Scotch
Cattle and Sheep--Night in a Wayside Cottage--Arrival at Inverness.
CHAPTER XVIII. Inverness--Ross-shire--Tain--Dornoch--Golspie--
Progress of Railroads--The Sutherland Eviction--Sea-coast Scenery--
Caithness--Wick--Herring Fisheries--John O'Groat's: Walk's End.
CHAPTER XIX. Anthony Cruickshank--The Greatest Herd of Shorthorns
in the World--Return to London and Termination of my Tour.
PREFACE.
In presenting this volume to the public, I feel that a few words of
explanation are due to the readers that it may obtain, in addition
to those offered to them in the first chapter. When I first visited
England, in 1846, it was my intention to make a pedestrian tour from
one end of the island to the other, in order to become more
acquainted with the country and people than I could by any other
mode of travelling. A few weeks after my arrival, I set out on such
a walk, and had made about one hundred miles on foot, when I was
constrained to suspend the tour, in order to take part in movements
which soon absorbed all my time and strength. For the ensuing ten
years I was nearly the whole time in Great Britain, travelling from
one end of the kingdom to the other, to promote the movements
referred to; still desiring to accomplish the walk originally
proposed. On returning to England at the beginning of 1863, after a
continuous residence of seven years in America, I found myself, for
the first time, in the condition to carry out my intention of 1846.
Several new motives had been added in the interval to those that had
at first operated upon my mind. I had dabbled a little in farming
in my native village, New Britain, Connecticut, and had labored to
excite additional interest in agriculture among my neighbors. We
had formed an Agricultural Club, and met weekly for several winters
to compare notes, exchange opinions' and discuss matters connected
with the occupation. They had honored me with the post of
Corresponding Secretary from the beginning. We held a meeting the
evening before I left for England, when they not only refused to
accept my resignation as Secretary, but made me promise to write
them letters about farming in the Mother Country, and on other
matters of interest that I might meet with on my travels there. My
first idea was to do this literally;--to make a walk through the
best agricultural sections of England, and write home a series of
communications to be inserted in our little village paper. But, on
second thought, on considering the size of the sheet, I found it
would require four or five years to print in it all I was likely to
write, at the rate of two columns a week. So I concluded that the
easiest and quickest way would be to make a book of my Notes by the
Way, and to send back to my old friends and neighbors in that form
all the observations and incidents I might make and meet on my walk.
The next thought that suggested itself was this,--that a good many
persons in Great Britain might feel some interest in seeing what an
American, who had resided so long in this country, might have to say
of its sceneries, industries, social life, etc. Still, in writing
out these Notes, although two distinct circles of readers--the
English and American--have been present to my mind, I felt
constrained to face and address the latter, just as if speaking to
them alone. I have, moreover, adopted the free and easy style of
epistolary composition, endeavoring to make each chapter as much
like one of the letters I promised my friends and neighbors at home
as practicable. In doing this, the "_I_" has, perhaps, talked far
too much to beseem those proprieties which the author of a book
should observe. Besides, expressions, figures and orthography more
American than English may be noticed, which will indicate the circle
of readers which the writer had primarily in view. Still, he would
fain believe that these features of the volume will not seriously
affect the interest it might otherwise possess in the minds of those
disposed to give it a reading in this country. Whatever exceptions
they may take to the style and diction, I hope they will find none
to the spirit of the work.
ELIHU BURRITT.
London, April 5th, 1864.
CHAPTER I.
MOTIVES TO THE WALK--THE IRON HORSE AND HIS RIDER--THE LOSSES AND
GAINS BY SPEED--THE RAILWAY TRACK AND TURNPIKE ROAD: THEIR
SCENERIES COMPARED.
One of my motives for making this tour was to look at the country
towns and villages on the way in the face and eyes; to enter them by
the front door, and to see them as they were made to be seen first,
as far as man's mind and hand intended and wrought. Railway
travelling, as yet, takes everything at a disadvantage; it does not
front on nature, or art, or the common conditions and industries of
men in town or country. If it does not actually of itself turn, it
presents everything the wrong side outward. In cities, it reveals
the ragged and smutty companionship of tumble-down out-houses, and
mysteries of cellar and back-kitchen life which were never intended
for other eyes than those that grope in them by day or night. How
unnatural, and, more, almost profane and inhuman, is the fiery
locomotion of the Iron Horse through these densely-peopled towns!
now the screech, the roar, and the darkness of cavernous passages
under paved streets, church vaults, and an acre or two of three-
story brick houses, with the feeling of a world of breathing,
bustling humanity incumbent upon you;--now the dash and flash out
into the light, and the higgledy-piggledy glimpses of the next five
minutes. In a moment you are above thickly-thronged streets, and
the houses on either side, looking down into the black throats of
smoky chimneys; into the garret lairs of poverty, sickness, and sin;
down lower upon squads of children trying to play in back-yards
eight feet square. It is all wrong, except in the single quality of
speed. You enter the town as you would a farmer's house, if you
first passed through the pig-stye into the kitchen. Every
respectable house in the city turns its back upon you; and often a
very brick and dirty back too, though it may show an elegant front
of Bath or Portland stone to the street it faces. All the
respectable streets run over or under you with an audible shudder of
disgust or dread. None but a shabby lane of low shops for the sale
of junk, beer, onions, shrimps, and cabbages, will run a third of a
mile by your side for the sake of your company. The wickedest boys
in the town hoot at you, with most ignominious and satiric antics,
as you pass; and if they do not shie stones in upon you, or dead
cats, it is more from fear of the beadle or the constable than out
of respect for your business or pleasure.
Indeed, every town and village, great or small, which you pass
through or near on the railway, looks as if you came fifty years
before you were expected. It says, in all the legible expressions
of its countenance, "Lack-a-day!--if here isn't that creature come
already, and looking in at my back door before I had time to turn
around, or put anything in shape!" The Iron Horse himself gets no
sympathy nor humane admiration. He stands grim and wrathy, when
reined up for two minutes and forty-five seconds at a station. No
venturesome boys pat him on the flanks, or look kindly into his
eyes, or say a pleasant word to him, or even wonder if he is tired,
or thirsty, or hungry. None of the ostlers of the greasy stables,
in which the locomotives are housed, ever call him Dobbin, or Old
Jack, or Jenny, or say, "Well done, old fellow!" when they unhitch
him from the train at midnight, after a journey of a hundred
leagues. His driver is a real man of flesh and blood; with wife and
children whom he loves. He goes on Sunday to church, and, maybe,
sings the psalms of David, and listens devoutly to the sermon, and
says prayers at home, and the few who know him speak well of him, as
a good and proper man in his way. But, spurred and mounted upon the
saddle of the great iron hexiped, nearly all the passengers regard
him as a part of the beast. No one speaks to him, or thinks of him
on the journey. He may pull up at fifty stations, and not a soul
among the Firsts, Seconds, or even Thirds, will offer him a glass of
beer, or pipe-full of tobacco, or give him a sixpence at the end of
the ride for extra speed or care. His face is grimy, and greasy,
and black. All his motions are ambiguous and awkward to the casual
observer. He has none of the sedate and conscious dignity of his
predecessor on the old stage-coach box. He handles no whip, like
him, with easy grace. Indeed, in putting up his great beast to its
best speed, he "hides his whip in the manger," according to a
proverb older than steam power. He wears no gloves in the coldest
weather; not always a coat, and never a decent one, at his work. He
blows no cheery music out of a brass bugle as he approaches a town,
but pricks the loins of the fiery beast, and makes him scream with a
sound between a human whistle and an alligator's croak. He never
pulls up abreast of the station-house door, in the fashion of the
old coach driver, to show off himself and his leaders, but runs on
several rods ahead of his passengers and spectators, as if to be
clear of them and their comments, good or bad. At the end of the
journey, be it at midnight or day-break, not a man nor a woman he
has driven safely at the rate of forty miles an hour thinks or cares
what becomes of him, or separates him in thought from the great iron
monster he mounts. Not the smock-frocked man, getting out of the
forwardmost Third, with his stick and bundle, thinks of him, or
stops a moment to see him back out and turn into the stable.
With all the practical advantages of this machine propulsion at bird
speed over space, it confounds and swallows up the poetical aspects
and picturesque sceneries that were the charm of old-fashioned
travelling in the country. The most beautiful landscapes rotate
around a locomotive axis confusedly. Green pastures and yellow
wheat fields are in a whirl. Tall and venerable trees get into the
wake of the same motion, and the large, pied cows ruminating in
their shade, seem to lie on the revolving arc of an indefinite
circle. The views dissolve before their best aspect is caught by
the eye. The flowers, like Eastern beauties, can only be seen "half
hidden and half revealed," in the general unsteadiness. As for
bees, you cannot hear or see them at all; and the songs of the
happiest birds are drowned altogether by the clatter of a hundred
wheels on the metal track. If there are any poor, flat, or fen
lands, your way is sure to lie through them. In a picturesque and
undulating country, studded with parks and mansions of wealth and
taste, you are plunging through a long, dark tunnel, or walled into
a deep cut, before your eye can catch the view that dashes by your
carriage window. If you have a utilitarian proclivity and purpose,
and would like to see the great agricultural industries of the
country, they present themselves to you in as confused aspects as
the sceneries of the passing landscape. The face of every farm is
turned from you. The farmer's house fronts on the turnpike road,
and the best views of his homestead, of his industry, prosperity,
and happiness, look that way. You only get a furtive glance, a kind
of clandestine and diagonal peep at him and his doings; and having
thus travelled a hundred miles through a fertile country you can
form no approximate or satisfactory idea of its character and
productions.
But no facts nor arguments are needed to convince an intelligent
traveller that the railway affords no point of view for seeing town
or country to any satisfactory perception of its character. Indeed,
neither coach of the olden, nor cab of the modern vogue, nor saddle,
will enable one to "do" either town or country with thorough insight
and enjoyment. It takes him too long to pull up to catch the
features of a sudden view. He can do nothing with those generous
and delightful institutions of Old England,--the footpaths, that
thread pasture, park, and field, seemingly permeating her whole
green world with dusky veins for the circulation of human life. To
lose all the picturesque lanes and landscapes which these field-
paths cross and command, is to lose the great distinctive charm of
the country. Then, neither from the coach-box nor the saddle can he
make much conversation on the way. He loses the chance of a
thousand little talks and pleasant incidents. He cannot say "Good
morning" to the farmer at the stile, nor a word of greeting to the
reapers over the hedge, nor see where they live, and the kind of
children that play by their cottage doors; nor the little, antique
churches, bearded to their eye-brows with ivy, covering the wrinkles
of half a dozen centuries, nor the low and quiet villages clustering
around, each like a family of bushy-headed children surrounding
their venerable mother.
In addition to these considerations, there was another that moved me
to this walk. Although I had been up and down the country as often
and as extensively as any American, perhaps, and admired its general
scenery, I had never looked at it with an agricultural eye or
interest. But, having dabbled a little in farming in the interval
between my last two visits to England, and being touched with some
of the enthusiasm that modern novices carry into the occupation, I
was determined to look at the agriculture of Great Britain more
leisurely and attentively, and from a better stand-point than I had
ever done before. The thought had also occurred to me, that a walk
through the best agricultural counties of England and Scotland would
afford opportunity for observation which might be made of some
interest to my friends and neighbor farmers in America as well as to
myself. Therefore I beg the English reader to remember that I am
addressing to them the notes that I may make by the way, hoping that
its incidents and the thoughts it suggests will not be devoid of
interest because they are principally intended for the American ear.