A Month in Yorkshire Part 9

And the shaping of this remarkable substance into articles for ornament and use gives employment to five hundred men, women, and children in Whitby. I was favoured with a sight of Mr. Greenbury's manufactory, and saw the processes from beginning to end. There is nothing mysterious about them. The pattern of the desired object, a scroll, leaf, flower, or whatever else, is scratched with a steel point on a piece of jet sawn to the required dimensions; the workman then with a knife cuts away the waste portions, brings out the rude form, and by using various knives and chisels, according to the delicacy of the design, he in no long time has the article ready for the polisher. The work looks very easy, as you watch the men cutting, apparently with less concern than some folk bestow on the whittling of a stick, and making the chips fly in little heaps. The nature of the jet favours rapidity of hand. It has somewhat the appearance of compressed pitch, and when under the knife sends off a shower of chips and splinters as hard pitch does. Some specimens have been found with fossils so embedded therein, as to confirm the opinion of those who hold jet to be a species of petroleum, contrary to the common belief that it is wood partly converted into coal.

After the knives, the grindstones come into play, to work up and smooth all the accessible surfaces; and next swift-whirling wheels encircled with list, which give the polish. The deep incisions and hollows which cannot be touched by the wheel are polished on narrow slips of list.

This is the work of boys: the slips of list are made fast by one end to the bench, and taking hold of the other, and shifting or tightening as the work may require, the boys rub the deep parts of the ornaments backwards and forwards till the polish is complete. The finishing touch, which imparts the brilliance, is given by a sprinkling of rouge, and a light hand with the rubber.

Armlets and bracelets composed of several pieces are cemented together, forming a complete hoop, while in course of manufacture, to ensure accuracy of workmanship, and are separated at last for the drilling of the holes for the elastic cord whereby they are held together in the finished state. The drilling of these holes through each separate piece is a nice operation, for any departure from the true line would appear as an imperfection in the ornament.

What with the drilling lathes, the rapid grindstones and polishing-wheels, and the busy artificers, from those who cut up the jet, to the roughers-out, the carvers, the polishers in their order, to the boys with their list rubbers, and the finishers, the factory presented a busy scene. The boys earn from three-and-sixpence to five shillings a week; the men from three to four times as much. I made an inquiry as to their economical habits, and heard in reply that the landlord of the _Jetmen's Arms_ could give the surest information.

No means have yet been discovered of working up the chips and splinters produced in cutting the jet, so as to form solid available blocks, as can be done with black-lead for pencils; there is, therefore, a considerable amount of waste. The value of jet varies with the quality; from ten to eighteen shillings a pound. According to the report on mineral products, by Mr. Robert Hunt, the value of the jet dug and manufactured in England is twenty thousand pounds a year. Some of the best shops in Whitby and Scarborough are those where jet is sold; and not the least attractive of the displays in Regent-street, is that labelled _Finest Whitby Jet_, and exhibited as vases, chains, rings, seals, brooches, taper-stands, and obelisks. Here in Whitby you may buy a small ammonite set in jet.

Jet is not a new object of luxury. It was used for ornamental purposes by the ancient Britons, and by their conquerors, as proved by articles found in their tombs. A trade in jet is known to have existed in Whitby in 1598. Camden, translating from an old _Treatise of Jewels_, has

"Jeat-stone almost a gemm, the Lybians find, But fruitful Britain sends a wondrous kind; 'Tis black and shining, smooth, and ever light, 'Twill draw up straws if rubb'd till hot and bright, Oyl makes it cold, but water gives it heat."

The amber mines of Prussia yield a species of jet which is burnt as a coal.

Whitby presents signs of a social phenomenon which is observable in other places: the decline of Quakerism. I was invited to look at the Mechanics' Inst.i.tute, and found it located in the Quakers' Meeting House. The town was one of George Fox's strongholds, and a considerable number of Quakers, including some of the leading families, remained up to the last generation. Death and secession have since then brought about the result above-mentioned. Is it that Quakerism has accomplished its work? or that it has been stifled by the a.s.siduous painstaking to make itself very comfortable?

I went up once more to the Abbey, and to enjoy the view from the churchyard steps. The trouble of the ascent is abundantly repaid by such a prospect: one should never tire of it. On moonlight nights, and in a certain state of the atmosphere, there is another attraction. It is a sight of Saint Hilda. Incredulous as you may be, there are maidens in Whitby who will tell you that the famous Abbess is still to be seen hovering near the Abbey she loved so well. And when the moon is in the right place, and a thin, pale mist floats slowly past, then, in one of the windows, appears the image of the saintly lady. Scott and other writers mention it; and Professor Rymer Jones tells me that he once saw it, and with an illusion so complete, as might easily have deceived a superst.i.tious beholder.

While looking down on the river you will hardly fail to remember that Cook sailed from it, to begin his apprenticeship to a seafaring life; and profiting in later years by his early experience, he chose Whitby-built ships for his memorable voyage of discovery. And from the Esk sailed the two Scoresbys, father and son--two of the latest names on the list of Yorkshire Worthies.

During the summer many an excursion train, or 'chape trip,' as the natives say, brings thousands of the hardworking population of the West Riding, to enjoy a brief holiday by the sea. There once arrived a party of miners two of whom hastened down to the beach to bathe. As they undressed one said to the other "Hey, Sam, hoo mooky thou is!" "Aw miss'd t' chape trip last year," was the laconic and significant reply.

Towards evening I took a trip by railway to Grosmont (six miles), or the Tunnel Station as it is commonly called, for a glance at the pretty scenery of the lower part of Eskdale. The river bordered by rocks and wooded hills enlivens the route. From the Tunnel I walked about half a mile down the line to a stone quarry, where a section of that remarkable basaltic dike is exposed, which, crossing the country in a north-westerly direction for about seventy miles, impresses the observer with a sense of wonder at the tremendous force by which such a ma.s.s was upheaved through the overlying strata. Here it has the form of a great wedge, the apex uppermost; and the sandstone, which it so rudely shouldered aside, is scorched and partially vitrified along the line of contact. The labourers, who break up the hard black basalt for macadamising purposes, call it 'chaney metal.'

This is a pleasant spot to loiter in; but its sylvan character is marred by the quarrying, and by the great excavations where busy miners dig the ironstone which abounds in the district, after the rate, as is estimated, of twenty-two thousand tons to the acre; no unimportant item in the exports of Whitby, until blast furnaces shall be built to make the iron on the spot.

"The path 'll tak' ye up to a laan," said the quarryman, with a Dutch p.r.o.nunciation of lane; "and t' laan 'll bring ye doon to Egton, if ye don't tak' t' wrang turning." So up through the wood I went, and came presently to the lane, where seeing a lonely little cottage, and a woman nursing a few flowers that grew near the door, I tarried for a short talk. 'Twas but a poor little place, she said, and vera lonesome; and she thought a few flowers made it look cheerful-like. The rent for the house and garden was but a pound a year; but 'twas as much as she could afford, for she had had ten children, and was thankful to say, brought 'em all up without parish help. 'Twas hard work at times; but folk didn't know what they could do till they tried. It animated me to hear such honest words.

A little farther there stands a long low cottage with a garden in front, an orchard at the side, and a row of beehives in a corner, presenting a scene of rural abundance. I stopped to look at the crowding flowers, and was drawn into another talk by the mistress, who came out on seeing a stranger. I could not help expressing my surprise at the prosperous look of the garden, and the shabby look of the house, which appeared the worse from a narrow ditch running along the front. "'Tis a miserable house," she answered, "damp and low; but what can we do? It's all very well, sir, to talk about the beautiful abbeys as they used to build in the old days, but they didn't build beautiful cottages. I always think that they built the wall till they couldn't reach no higher standing on the ground, and then they put the roof on. That's it, sir; anything was good enough for country-folk in them days." Some modern writers contend that the abbeys and cathedrals were but the highest expression of an architecture beautiful and appropriate in all its degrees; but I doubt the fact, and hold by the Yorkshirewoman's homely theory.

I suggested that the landlord might be asked to build a new house. "Ah, sir, you wouldn't say that if you knew him. Why, he won't so much as give us a board to mend the door; he'll only tell us where to go and buy one." I might have felt surprised that any landlord should be willing to allow English men and women to dwell in such a hovel; but she told me his name, and then there was no room for surprise.

Ere long the view opens over the valley, and a charming valley it is; hill after hill covered with wood to the summit. Then the lane descends rapidly, and we come to the romantically situated hamlet of Egton Bridge. This is a place which, above all others, attracts visitors and picnic parties from Whitby, and the _Oak Tree_ is the very picture of a rustic hostelry. Here you may fancy yourself in a deep wooded glen; and, if limited for time, will have an embarra.s.sing choice of walks.

Arncliffe woods offer cool green shades, and a fine prospect from the ridge beyond, with the opportunity to visit an ancient British village.

But few can resist the charm of the Beggar's Bridge, a graceful structure of a single arch, which spans the Esk in a sequestered spot delightful to the eye and refreshing to the ear, with the gurgling of water and rustling of leaves. There is a legend, too, for additional charm: how that a young dalesman, on his way to say farewell to his betrothed, was stopped here by the stream swollen with a sudden flood, and, spite of his efforts to cross, was forced to retrace his steps and sail beyond the sea to seek fortune in a distant land. He vowed, if his hopes were gratified, to build a bridge on his return; and, to quote Mrs. George Dawson's pretty version of the legend,

"The rover came back from a far distant land, And he claimed of the maiden her long-promised hand; But he built, ere he won her, the bridge of his vow, And the lovers of Egton pa.s.s over it now."

A pleasant twilight walk among the trees, within hearing of the rippling Esk, brought me back to the Tunnel in time for the last train to Whitby.

CHAPTER XIII.

To Upgang--Enter Cleveland--East Row--The first Alum-Maker-- Sandsend--Alum-Works--The huge Gap--Hewing the Alum Shale-- Limestone Nodules: Mulgrave Cement--Swarms of Fossils--Burning the Shale--Volcanic Phenomena--From Fire to Water--The Cisterns --Soaking and Pumping--The evaporating Pans--The Crystallizing Process--The Roching Casks--Brilliant Crystals--A Chemical Triumph--Rough Epsoms.

It was yet early the next morning when I descended from the high road to the sh.o.r.e at Upgang, about two miles from Whitby. Here we approach a region of manufacturing industry. Wagons pa.s.s laden with Mulgrave cement, with big, white lumps of alum, with sulphate of magnesia; the kilns are not far off, and the alum-works at Sandsend are in sight, backed by the wooded heights of Mulgrave Park, the seat of the Marquis of Normanby. Another half-hour, and crossing a beck which descends from those heights, we enter Cleveland, of which the North Riding is made to say,

"----If she were not here confined thus in me, A shire even of herself might well be said to be."

Hereabouts, in the olden time, stood a temple dedicated to Thor, and the place was called Thordisa--a name for which the present East Row is a poor exchange. The alteration, so it is said, was made by the workmen on the commencement of the alum manufacture in 1620. The works, now grimy with smoke, are built between the hill-foot and the sea, a short distance beyond the beck.

The story runs that the manufacture of alum was introduced into Yorkshire early in the seventeenth century by Sir Thomas Chaloner, who had travelled in Italy, and there seen the rock-beds from which the Italians extracted alum. Riding one day in the neighbourhood of Guisborough, he noticed that the foliage of the trees resembled in colour that of the leaves in the alum districts abroad; and afterwards he commenced an alum-work in the hills near that town, sanctioned by a patent from Charles I. One account says that he smuggled over from the Papal States, concealed in casks, workmen who were acquainted with the manufacture, and was excommunicated by the Pope for this daring breach of his own monopoly. The Sandsend works were established a few years later. Subsequently certain courtiers prevailed on the king to break faith with Sir Thomas, and to give one-half of the patent to a rival, which so exasperated the knight that he became a Roundhead, and one of the most relentless foes of the king. A great monopoly of the alum-works was attempted towards the end of the last century by Sir George Colebroke, who, being an East India director, got the name of Shah Allum. His attempt failed.

My request for permission to view the works was freely granted, and I here repeat my acknowledgments for the favour. The foreman, I was told, took but little pains with visitors who came, and said, "Dear me! How very curious!" and yawned, and wanted to go away at the end of ten minutes; but for any one in earnest to see the operations from beginning to end, he would spare no trouble. Just the very man for me I thought; so leaving my knapsack at the office, I followed the boy who was sent to show me the way to the mine. Up the hill, and across fields for about half a mile, brought us to the edge of a huge gap, which at first sight might have been taken for a stone quarry partially changed into the crater of a volcano. At one side clouds of white sulphureous smoke were rising; within lay great heaps resembling brick rubbish; and heaps of shale, and piles of stony b.a.l.l.s, and stacks of brushwood; and while one set of men were busily hacking and hewing the great inner walls, others were loading and hauling off the tramway wagons, others pumping, or going to and fro with wheelbarrows.

There was no proper descent from the side to which we came, and to scramble down three or four great steps, each of twenty feet, with perpendicular fronts, was not easy. However, at last I was able to present to the foreman the sc.r.a.p of paper which I had brought from the office, and to feel sure that such an honest countenance and bright eye as his betokened a willing temper. Nor was I disappointed, for he at once expressed himself ready to show and explain everything that I might wish to see.

"Let us begin at the beginning," I said; and he led me to the cliff, where the diggers were at work. The formation reminded me of what I had seen in the quarries at Portland: first a layer of earth, then a hard, worthless kind of stone, named the 'cap' by the miners; next a deposit of marlstone and 'doggerhead,' making altogether a thickness of about fifty feet; and below this comes the great bed of upper lias, one hundred and fifty feet thick; and this lias is the alum shale. Where freshly exposed, its appearance may be likened to slate soaked in grease: it has a greasy or soapy feel between the fingers, but as it oxidises rapidly on exposure to the air, the general colour of the cliff is brown. Here the shale is not worked below seventy-five feet; for every fathom below that becomes more and more bituminous, and more liable to vitrify when burnt, and will not yield alum. At some works, however, the excavation is continued down to ninety feet. Embedded in the shale, most abundant in the upper twenty-five feet, the workmen find nodules of limestone, the piles of b.a.l.l.s I had noticed from above, about the size of a cricket-ball; and of these the well-known Mulgrave cement is made. The Marquis, to whom all the land hereabouts belongs, requires that his lessees shall sell to him all the limestone nodules they find.

The supply is not small, judging from the great heap which I saw thrown aside in readiness for carting away. Alum shale prevails in the cliffs for twenty-seven miles along the coast of Yorkshire, in which are found one hundred and fifty kinds of ammonites.

Besides b.a.l.l.s of limestone, the shale abounds in fossils. It was in this--the lias--that nearly all the specimens, including the gigantic reptiles of the ancient world which we saw in the Museum at Whitby were found. Every stroke of the pick brings them out; and as the shale is soft and easily worked, they are separated without difficulty. You might collect a cartload in half a day. For a few minutes I felt somewhat like a schoolboy in an orchard, and filled my pockets eagerly with the best that came in my way. But ammonites and mussels, when turned to stone, are very heavy, and before the day was over I had to lighten my load: some I placed where pa.s.sers-by could see them; then I gave some away at houses by the road, till not more than six remained for a corner of my knapsack. And these were quite enough, considering that I had yet to walk nearly three hundred miles.

After the digging comes the burning. A layer of brushwood is made ready on the ground, and upon this the shale is heaped to the height of forty or fifty feet until a respectable little mountain is formed, comprising three thousand tons, or more. The rear of the ma.s.s rests against the precipice, and from narrow ledges and projections in this the men tilt their barrow-loads as the elevation increases. The fire, meanwhile, creeps about below, and soon the heap begins to smoke, sending out white sulphureous fumes in clouds that give it the appearance of a volcano.

Such a heap was smouldering and smoking at the mouth of the great excavation, the sulphate of iron, giving off its acid to the clay, converting it thereby into sulphate of alumina. All round the base, and for a few feet upwards, the fire had done its work, and the ma.s.s was cooling; but above the creeping glow was still active. The colour is changed by the burning from brown to light reddish yellow, with a streak of darker red running along all the edges of the fragments; and the progress of combustion might be noted by the differences of colour: in some places pale; then a mottled zone, blending upwards with the sweating patches under the smoke. Commonly the heap burns for three months; hence a good manager takes care so to time his fires that a supply of _mine_--as the calcined shale is technically named--is always in readiness. Fifty tons of this burnt shale are required to make one ton of alum.

We turned to the heap which I have mentioned as resembling a mound of brick rubbish at a distance. One-third of it had been wheeled away to the cisterns, exposing the interior, and I could see how the fire had touched every part, and left its traces in the change of colour and the narrow red border round each calcined chip. The pieces lie loosely together, so that on digging away below, the upper part falls of itself.

The man who was filling the barrows had hacked out a cavernous hollow; it seemed that a slip might be momentarily expected, for the top overhung threateningly, and yet he continued to hack and dig with apparent unconcern, and replied to the foreman's caution, "Oh! it won't come down afore to-morrow. It'll give warning."

Now for the watery ordeal. On the sloping ground between the cliffs and the sea, shallow pits or cisterns are sunk, nearly fifty feet long and twenty wide, and so placed, with a bottom sloping from a depth of one foot at one end to two feet at the other, as to communicate easily with one another by pipes and gutters. Whether alum-works shall pay or not, is said to depend in no small degree on the proper arrangement of the pits. Each pit will contain forty wagon-loads of the mine. As soon as it is full, liquor is pumped into it from a deep cistern covered by a shed, and this at the end of three days is drawn off by the tap at the lower end, and when drained the pit is again pumped full and soaked for two days. Yet once more is it pumped full, but with water--producing first, second, and third run, and sometimes a fourth--but the last is the weakest, and is kept to be pumped up as liquor on a fresh pit for first run. It would be poor economy to evaporate so weak a solution. Each pit employs five men.

All this is carried on in the open air, with the sea lashing the sh.o.r.e but a few yards off, and all around the signs of what to a stranger appears but a rough and ready system. And in truth there must be something wasteful in it, for all the alum is never abstracted. After the third or fourth washing, the mine is shovelled from the pits and flung away on the beach, where the sea soon levels it to a uniform slope. In one of the so-called exhausted pits I saw many pieces touched, as it were, by h.o.a.r frost, which was nothing but minute crystals of alum formed on the surface, strongly acid to the taste.

The rest of the process was to be seen down at the works, so thither we went; not by the way I came, for the foreman, scrambling up the side of the gap, conducted me along the ledge at the top of the burning heap. He walked through the stifling fumes without annoyance, while on me they produced a painful sense of choking, with an impulse to run. Before we had pa.s.sed, however, he pushed aside a few of the upper pieces, and showed me the dull glow of the fire beneath. Then we had more ledges along the face of the cliff, and now and then to creep and jump; and we crossed an old digging, which looked ugly with its heaps of waste and half-starved patches of gra.s.s. All the way extends a course of long wooden gutters, in which the first-run liquor was flowing in a continuous stream to undergo its final treatment--another trial by fire.

Then into a low, darksome shed, where from one end to the other you see nothing but leaden evaporating pans and cisterns, some steaming, and all containing liquor in different states of preparation. That from which the most water has been evaporated--the concentrated solution--has a large cistern to itself, where its tendency to crystallize is a.s.sisted by an admixture of liquor containing ammonia in solution, and immediately the alum falls to the bottom in countless crystals. The liquor above them, now become 'mother liquor,' or more familiarly 'mothers,' is drawn off, the crystals are washed clean in water, are again dissolved, and once more boiled, mixed with gallons of mothers remaining from former boilings. When of the required density, the liquor is run off from the pan to the 'roching casks'--great b.u.t.ts rather, big as a sugar hogshead, and taller; and in these is left to cool and crystallize after its manner, from eight to ten days, according to the season. The b.u.t.ts are constructed so as to take to pieces easily, and at the right time the hoops are knocked off, the staves removed, and there on the floor stands a great white cask of alum, solid all over, top, bottom, and sides, except in its centre a quant.i.ty of liquor which has not crystallized. This having been drawn off by a hole driven through, the ma.s.s is then broken to pieces, and is fit for the market; and for the use of dyers, leather-dressers, druggists, tallow-chandlers; for bakers even, and other crafty traders.

Looked at from the outside, there is no beauty in the cask of alum; but as soon as the interior is exposed, then the numberless crystals shooting from every part, glisten again as the light streams in upon them; and you acknowledge that the cunning by which they have been produced from the dull slaty shale is a happy triumph of chemical art--one that will stand a comparison with a recent triumph, the extraction of brilliantly white candles from the great brown peat-bogs of Ireland, or from Rangoon tar. Perhaps some readers will remember the beautiful specimen of alum crystals--an entire half-tun that stood in the nave of the Great Exhibition.

Alum is made near Glasgow from the shale of abandoned coal mines, soaked in water without burning. After the works had been carried on for some years, and the heap of refuse had spread over the neighbourhood to an inconvenient extent, it was found that on burning this waste shale, it would yield a second profitable supply of alum. Moreover, artificial alum is manufactured in considerable quant.i.ties from a mixture of clay and sulphuric acid.

In going about the works it was impossible not to be struck by the contrast between the sooty aspect of the roofs, beams, and gangways, and the whiteness of the crystal fringes in the pans, and the snowy patches here and there where the vapour had condensed. And in an outhouse wagon-loads of 'rough Epsoms' lay in a great white heap on the black floor. This rough Epsoms, or sulphate of magnesia, is the crystals thrown down by the mother-liquor after a second boiling.

In our goings to and fro, we talked of other things as well as alum; of that other mineral wealth, the ironstone, to which Cleveland owes so important a development of industry within the past fifteen years. The existence of ironstone in the district had long been known; but not till the foreman--jointly with his father--discovered a deposit near Skinningrave, and drew attention to it, was any attempt made to work it.

Geologically the deposit is known as clayband ironstone; hence clay will still make known the fame of this corner of Yorkshire, as when the old couplet was current--

"Cleveland in the clay, Carry in two shoon, bring one away."

If I liked the foreman at first sight, much more did I like him upon acquaintance. He won my esteem as much by his frank and manly bearing, as by his patient attentions and intelligent explanations; and I shook his hand at parting with a sincere hope of having another talk with him some day.