GEOGRAPHY READING BOOKS.

PART IV.

SECTION I.

ENGLISH RAILWAYS.

L

I. INTRODUCTORY.

ROADS AND RAILWAYS.

AST year, you remember, we went on a little

voyage round the coast of England and Wales; and afterwards we took a trip by balloon over the chief water-partings and river-basins. I hope you remember what we saw; the hills and mountains, the rivers and their tributaries, the counties through which they flow, and the chief towns on their banks.

2. 'This year we must not spend much time on England and Wales, but I should like to give you a few short trips by another way of travelling. I dare say Johnny can tell us how we ought to go, if we want to get quickly from one place to another.

3. Oh! by railway,' says Johnny.

I hope we shall go by fast trains: I don't like stopping at every station, and it keeps us so long on the way.'

4. 'Ah! Johnny, if you had lived fifty years ago, when the first railways were made, you would have thought the slowest train very quick indeed! Ten years earlier, people would hardly have known what the word meant.

5. 'We thought it a great thing, in those days, to travel in a fast coach with four horses, at the rate of twelve or thirteen miles an hour. Now we think it slow if we do not go twenty-five or thirty; and express trains sometimes go sixty miles in the hour. The journey from Edinburgh to London took at least two days; now it takes rather less than twelve hours!

6. 'If we look still farther back, we come to days when there were no fast coaches; when rich people travelled in their own carriages, or rode on horseback, and poor people walked, or went in heavy waggons.

7. 'Farther back still, there were no carriages, and no waggons like ours. And, two thousand years ago, when we first hear of this country, there were no roads! The first people who made roads were the Romans. They cut down the forests, and

drained the water from the marshes; and so well did they make their roads, that many of them have lasted through all these years, and we can tell even now how they ran.

8. 'Most of them are as straight as they could be made; uphill and down again, hardly ever turning to go round a hill, and often running high up, along the side of a hill, because the Romans wanted to be able to see all round them, in case an enemy should be coming to attack them.

9. 'So we have gone on, making things better and better, through these two thousand years. First the Roman roads, on which horses could travel; then, by degrees, carriages, carts, waggons; then stage-coaches, drawn by heavy, clumsy horses, often sticking fast in mud or snow; then the fast coaches, and, last of all, the railways.

10. In some ways travelling by coach was pleasanter than it can ever be by railway. It was pleasant, on a fine bright morning, to watch the growing light coming out on the fields and streams, and at last to see the sun rise over the distant hills; to wind through the valleys and round the shoulders of hills, or climb slowly up the slope, and then dash at full speed down the other side, coming in sight of new scenes at every turn, and keeping each in view long enough to enjoy them; then

sweeping up the streets of some quiet market town, with the guard's bugle sounding merry music behind you all this was very pleasant; and we forget, in looking back, the bitter cold of frosty nights, or the cheerless drizzle of rainy days. But all has passed away, and we may well be thankful for the speed and comfort and cheapness of railways, for the saving of time to the busy man, of hardships to the weak and sickly, and of money to the poor.'

II. SOUTHERN DIVISION.

LONDON, CHATHAM, AND DOVER.

I. 'NEARLY all the great lines of railway branch off from London. Let us take them in their order, keeping as nearly as we can to the four Divisions, which (as we saw last year) are marked out by the water-partings.

2. 'We must add Kent to the counties of the Southern Division; and then we have four main lines: The London, Chatham, and Dover; the South-Eastern; the London, Brighton, and South Coast; and the South-Western.'

3. 'Let us go to Dover!' cries Johnny; 'I want to have another look at the chalk cliffs.'