The divisions which I have pointed out in the Cheshire plain are still further marked by the course of the streams in this tract of country. The Dee is the great river of the western plain; the Weaver and its subordinate streams receive all the waters of the southern division; while the Mersey and its tributaries do the same in the northern portion. From their local relation to the great beds of rock—salt, the streams of the southern or central plain possess a peculiar importance.
The Weaver rises in the Peckforton Hills, near the Shropshire border, runs for some miles towards the south-east, then making a sudden flexion to the north, continues in this direction, by Nantwich and Winsford, to Northwich, about thirty miles further. Here it takes a north-westerly course to Frodsham, where it expands into a sandy æstuary, connected with the channel of the Mersey. It receives its principal accessions at Northwich, where it is joined by the united streams of the Dane and Wheelock from the south-east, and by a stream called Witton-Brook from the east. At Anderton, a little below Northwich, the valley which has hitherto been comparatively wide and flat, is suddenly contracted by the approach of two ranges of high ground; that on the western side of the river connecting itself by a gradual rise with the heights of Delamere Forest; the opposite one passing by a series of irregular elevations into the range of high land, which separates the southern from the northern plain. At Frodsham the river flows, as I before mentioned, between the termination of this high ground and that of the ridge which crosses the county from north to south, the hills thus opposed corresponding perfectly in appearance and structure. We have thus two distinct contractions in the valley of the Weaver below Northwich; a circumstance in some degree worthy of notice.
