20.

We left Ashbourn and went to Buxton, thence to Pool's Hole, which is narrow at first, but then rises into a high arch; but is so obstructed with crags,

that it is

Buxton.

Pool's Hole.

yards from the mouth. They take passengers up the higher way, and bring them back the lower. The higher way was so difficult and dangerous, that, having tried it, I desisted. I found no level

part.

Macclesfield.

At night we came to Macclesfield, a very large town in Cheshire, little known. It has a silk mill: it has a handsome church, which, however, is but a chapel, for the town belongs to some parish of another name, as Stourbridge lately did to Old Swinford.

Macclesfield has a town-hall, and is, I suppose, a corporate town".

The parish of Prestbury.

The Corporation consists of twentyfour aldermen, and has such rights and

privileges as commonly appertain to corporate towns.

We came to Congleton, where there is likewise a silk mill. Then to Middlewich, a mean old town, without any manufacture, but, I think, a Corporation. Thence we proceeded to Namptwich, an old town: from the Inn, I saw scarcely any but black timber houses. I tasted the brine water, which contains much more salt than the sea water. By slow evaporation, they

Congleton.

Middlewich.

Namptwich.

• Sea water, in its natural state, is but a weak brine; but its saltness varies in different seas, and at different depths. In the Baltic, the proportion of common salt, and other saline ingredients, to the water in which it

D

make large crystals of salt; by quick boiling, small granulations. It seemed to have no other preparation.

is held in solution, is as one to forty; in the British Channel, as one to thirty; and at a great depth near the Equator, as one to twenty-three: but the average may be estimated as one to twenty-eight. The brine in our salt works undergoes a process which is called graduation, by which its strength is greatly increased before it is submitted to evaporation. The colour of salt ought to be of a delicate bluewhiteness; any approach to yellow shews that the brine has been contaminated, by the presence of iron.

At evening we came to Comber

Combermere.

mere, so called from a wide lake.

22.

We went up the Mere. I pulled a bulrush of about ten feet. I

3

f At this time the seat of Sir Lynch Salusbury Cotton, now, of Lord Combermere, his grandson, from which place he takes his title. It is situated in Cheshire, twenty-two miles from Shrewsbury.

Great Cats'-tail, or Reed-mace. The Typha latifolia of Linnæus.- See Classes and Orders of Linnæus, vol, iii. p. 434.