exist. The prosperity and great population of the Pennine region
date from the discovery that pit-coal could smelt iron as well as
charcoal; and this source of power once discovered, the people bred
in the dales developed a remarkable genius for mechanical invention
and commercial enterprise, which revolutionized the economic
life of the world and changed England from an agricultural to an
industrial country. The staple industry of the district in ancient
times was sheep-rearing, and the villages in nearly all the dales
carried on a small manufacture of woollen cloth. The introduction
of cotton caused the woollen manufactures on the western side to be
superseded by the working up of the imported raw material; but
woollen manufactures, themselves carried on now almost entirely
with imported raw material, have continued to employ the energies
of the inhabitants of the east. Some quiet market-towns, such as
Skipton and Keighley, remain, but most of them have developed
by manufactures into great centres of population, lying, as a rule,
at the junction of thickly peopled valleys, and separated from one
another by the empty uplands. Such are Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield,
Huddersfield and Halifax on the great and densely peopled West
Riding coal-field, which lies on the eastern slope of the Pennines.
The iron ores of the Coal Measures have given rise to great manufactures
of steel, from cutlery to machinery and armour-plates.
High on the barren crest of the Pennines, where the rocks yield no
mineral wealth, except it be medicinal waters, Harrogate, Buxton
and Matlock are types of health resorts, prosperous from their
pure air and fine scenery. Across the moors, on the western side
of the anticline, the vast and dense population of the Lancashire
coal-field is crowded in the manufacturing towns surrounding the
great commercial centre, Manchester, which itself stands on the edge
of the Triassic plain. Ashton, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Bolton and
Wigan form a nearly confluent semicircle of great towns, their prosperity
founded on the underlying coal and iron, maintained by
imported cotton. The Lancashire coal-field, and the portion of the
bounding plain between it and the seaport of Liverpool, contain a
population greater than that borne by any equal area in the country,
the county of London and its surroundings not excepted. In the
south-west of the Pennine region the coal-field of North Staffordshire
supports the group of small but active towns known collectively
from the staple of their trade as “The Potteries.” On the north-east
the great coal-field of Northumberland and Durham, traversed midway
by the Tyne, supports the manufactures of Newcastle and its
satellite towns, and leaves a great surplus for export from the
Tyne ports.
Wales.—The low island of Anglesey, which is built up of the fundamental Archaean rocks, is important as a link in the main line of communication with Ireland, because it is separated from the mainland by a channel narrow enough to be bridged, and lies not far out of the straight line joining London and Dublin. The mainland of Wales rises into three main highlands, the mountain groups of North, Mid and South Wales, connected together by land over 1000 ft. in elevation in most places, but separated by valleys affording easy highways. The streams of the southern and western slopes are short and many, flowing directly to the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea; but the no less numerous streams of the eastern slopes gather themselves into three river systems, and reach the sea as the Dee, the Severn and the Wye. The mountain group of North Wales is the largest and loftiest; its scenery resembles that of the Scottish Highlands because of the juxtaposition of ancient Palaeozoic rocks—Cambrian and Ordovician, often altered into slate—and contemporaneous volcanic outbursts and igneous intrusions. Here rises the peak of Snowdon (3560 ft.), the culminating point of South Britain, and near it half a dozen summits exceed 3000 ft., while Cader Idris, farther south, though slightly lower, presents a singularly imposing outline. The mild winter climate has fringed the coast with seaside resorts, the rugged heights attract tourists in summer, and the vast masses of slate have given rise to the largest slate quarries in the world. The heavy rainfall of the upper valleys unfits them for agriculture, and the farms are poor. There are several lakes: that of Bala being the largest, except the old lake of Vyrnwy, reconstituted artificially to store the rainfall for the water-supply of Liverpool, 68 m. distant. The Vyrnwy is tributary to the Severn; but north of it the streams gather into the Dee, and flow eventually northward. Mid Wales is built up, for the most part, of Silurian or Ordovician rocks, practically free from igneous intrusions except in the south-west. There the resistance of a series of igneous dykes gives prominence to the Pembroke peninsula, in which the fine fjord-like harbour of Milford Haven lies far out towards the Atlantic. The coast north of Pembroke and Merioneth has been worked into the grand sweep of Cardigan Bay, its surface carved into gently rounded hills, green with rich grass, which sweep downward into wide rounded valleys. Plinlimmon (2468 ft.) is the highest of the hills, and forms a sort of hydrographic centre for the group, as from its eastern base the Severn and the Wye take their rise—the former describing a wide curve to east and south, the latter forming a chord to the arc in its southward course. Mid Wales is mainly a pastoral country, and very thinly peopled. A group of artificial lakes, one of them exceeded in area only by Windermere, has been formed in the valley of the Elan, a tributary of the Wye, for the supply of water to Birmingham. The group of heights of South Wales, running on the whole from west to east, marks the outcrops of the Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous strata which lie within a vast syncline of the Silurian rocks. The Brecon Beacons of Old Red Sandstone are the highest (2907 ft.), but the Black Mountain bears a number of picturesque summits carved out of Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone, which rise frequently over 2000 ft. Throughout Hereford, and in part of Monmouthshire, the Old Red Sandstone sinks to a great undulating plain, traversed by the exquisite windings of the Wye, and forming some of the richest pasture and fruit lands of England. This plain formed an easy passage from south to north, and since the time of the Romans was a strategical line of the greatest importance, a fact which has left its traces on the present distribution of towns. Around the western and northern edge of the Old Red Sandstone plain the underlying Silurian rocks (and even the Cambrian and Archaean in places) have been bent up so that their edges form hills of singular abruptness and beauty. Of these are the Malvern Hills, east of Hereford, and in particular the hills of Shropshire. Wenlock Edge, running from south-west to north-east, is an escarpment of Silurian limestone, while the broad upland of Long Mynd, nearly parallel to it on the north, is a mass of Archaean rock. The Wrekin, the Caradoc and Cardington Hills are isolated outbursts of pre-Cambrian volcanic rocks. The outer rim of the Welsh area contains a broken series of coal-fields, where patches of Carboniferous strata come to the surface on the edge of the New Red Sandstone plain. Such are the coal-fields of Flint in the north, the Forest of Wyre and the Forest of Dean, close to the Severn, on the east. The great coal-field on the south is a perfect example of a synclinal basin, the Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone which underlie the Coal Measures appearing all round the margin. This coal-field occupies practically the whole of Glamorgan and part of Monmouth, and its surface slopes from the Black Mountain and Brecon Beacons to the sea as a gently inclined plateau, scored by deep valleys draining south. Each chief valley has a railway connecting a string of mining villages, and converging seaward to the busy ports of Newport, Cardiff and Barry (a town created on a sandy island by the excavation of a great dock to form an outlet for the mines). In the north of the field, where the limestone crops out and supplies the necessary flux, Merthyr Tydfil has become great through iron-smelting; and in the west Swansea is the chief centre in the world for copper and tin smelting. The unity and ruggedness of the highlands of Wales have proved sufficient to isolate the people from those of the rest of South Britain, and to preserve a purely Celtic race, still very largely of Celtic speech.
Cornwall and Devon.—The peninsula of Cornwall and Devon may be looked upon as formed from a synclinal trough of Devonian rocks, which appear as plateaus on the north and south, while the centre is occupied by Lower Carboniferous strata at a lower level. The northern coast, bordering the Bristol Channel, is steep, with picturesque cliffs and deep bays or short valleys running into the high land, each occupied by a little seaside town or village. The plateau culminates in the barren heathy upland of Exmoor, which slopes gently southward from a general elevation of 1600 ft., and is almost without inhabitants. The Carboniferous rocks of the centre form a soil which produces rich pasture under the heavy rainfall and remarkably mild and equable temperature, forming a great cattle-raising district. The Devonian strata on the south do not form such lofty elevations as those on the north, and are in consequence, like the plain of Hereford, very fertile and peculiarly adapted for fruit-growing and cider-making. The remarkable features of the scenery of South Devon and Cornwall are due to a narrow band of Archaean rock which appears in the south of the peninsulas terminating in Lizard Head and Start Point, and to huge masses of granite and other eruptive rocks which form a series of great bosses and dykes. The largest granite boss gives relief to the wild upland of Dartmoor, culminating in High Willhays and Yes Tor. The clay resulting from the weathering of the Dartmoor granite has formed marshes and peat bogs, and the desolation of the district has been emphasized by the establishment in its midst of a great convict prison, and in its northern portion of a range for artillery practice. The Tamar flows from north to south on the Devonian plain, which lies between Dartmoor on the east and the similar granitic boss of Bodmin Moor (where Brown Willy rises to 1345 ft.) on the west. There are several smaller granite bosses, of which the mass of Land’s End is the most important. Most of the Lizard peninsula, the only part of England stretching south of 50° N., is a mass of serpentine. The great variety of the rocks which meet the sea along the south of Cornwall and Devon has led to the formation of a singularly picturesque coast—the headlands being carved from the hardest igneous rocks, the bays cut back in the softer Devonian strata. The fjord-like inlets of Falmouth, Plymouth and Dartmouth are splendid natural harbours, which would have developed great commercial ports but for their remoteness from the centres of commerce and manufactures. China clay from the decomposing granites; tin and copper ore, once abounding at the contacts between the granite and the rocks it pierced, were the former staples of wealth, and the mining largely accounts for the exceptional density of population in Cornwall. Fishing has always been important, the numerous good harbours giving security to fishing-boats; and the fact that this coast is the mildest and almost the sunniest, though by no means the driest, part of Great Britain has led to the establishment of many health
