Elihu Burritt

“ Never was the cellar of a district of equal size stored with richer or more varied treasures. Never a gold-field on the face of the earth, of ten miles radius, produced such vast values as these subterranean acres have done. To be sure, the nuggets they have yielded to the pick have been black and rough, and blackened and rough men have sent them to the surface And when they were landed by the noisy and uncouth machinery of the well and windlass, they made no sensation in the men who emptied the tubs, any more than if they were baskets of potatoes. ”

“ It is not a figure of speech but a geological fact, that in some, if not all, parts of this remarkable region, the coal and lime are packed together in alternate layers in almost the very proportion for the furnace requisite to give the proper flux to the melted iron. Thus Nature has not only put the requisite raw materials side by side, but she has actually mixed them in right proportions for use, and even supplied mechanical suggestions for going to work to coin these deposits into a currency better than gold alone to the country. ”

“ Still, like an ever-flowing river, running through a sandy region that drinks in but part of its waters, there is a stream of raw mineral wealth flowing without bar or break through the absorbing district that produces it, and watering distant counties of England. ”

“ One would be inclined to believe, on seeing the black forest of chimneys smoking over large towns and villages as well as the flayed spaces between, that all the coal and iron mined in the district must be used in it. The furnaces, foundries, and manufactories seem almost countless ”

“ Nature did for the ironmasters of the Black Country all she could; indeed, everything except literally building the furnaces themselves. She brought together all that was needed to set and keep them in blast. The iron ore, coal, and lime—the very lining of the furnaces—were all deposited close at hand for the operation. Had either two of these elements been dissevered, as they are in some countries, the district would have lost much of its mineral wealth in its utilization. ”

“ Such an unroofing of the smoky, palpitating region would show how soon the subterranean detachments of miners and counter-miners must meet, and make a clean sweep of the lower half of that mineral world. For a century or more they have been working to this end ”