Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/178

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164
Walks in the Black Country

make the axes of the Douglas Manufactory Company of Massachusetts might read these notes and observations, and that they would feel some interest in the name and character of the English nobleman who works his own mines and metals for New England forges.

Having surveyed The Black Country from Dudley Castle, the tourist or visiter of the district should go immediately to another view-tower but a few miles distant, which commands a scenery of remarkable contrast with the iron region of fire and smoke. This is the Clent Hills, in or rather over Hagley. It is doubtful if such a contrast can be found elsewhere in any country. It is a contrast which affects equally all the senses and faculties of enjoyment, and therefore all the more difficult to describe. From the Castle Hill of Dudley Nature has the under-hand, and from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot she is scourged with cat-o'-nine-tails of red-hot wire, and marred and scarred and fretted, and smoked half to death day and night, year and year, even on Sundays. Almost every square inch of her form is reddened, blackened, and distorted by the terrible tractoration of a hot blister. But all this cutaneous eruption is nothing compared with the internal violence and agonies she has to endure. Never was animal being subjected to such merciless and ceaseless vivisection. The