an estate of 13,500% a year, and allow their mayor 1200 a year. Sir Walter Blacket, when he serves that office, takes nothing.

These particulars will by no means fatisfy you-they are far from fatisfying myself, but they are all I could procure.I wanted to be informed of the tonnage of their shipping, the number of failors employed, the nature and extent of their foreign trade, the degree of increase or decrease, and at what periods, with many other circumstances.I could infert, in the common hackneyed ftyle, That Newcastle is a place of very confiderable trade, her merchants poffefing a very extenfive correfpondence, exporting this, that, and the other, and importing fuch and fuch commodities, &c. &c. These are the general accounts we meet with in books of geography, copied from one to another, till a man of any reading is disgusted with the impertinence. I may be trifling and abfurd, but I will never give you fuch pages of inanity as thefe.

The people employed in the coal-mines are prodigiously numerous, amounting to Salvator Rofa. A water fall. Spirited and alive. Another; rocks and wood. Good; but does not appear to me to equal the firft.

Pouffin.

Large landscape. In a fine but gloomy ftile.

many

many thousands; the earnings of the men are from 1s. to 4s. a day, and their firing. The coal waggon roads, from the pits to the water, are great works, carried over all forts of inequalities of ground, fo far as the distance of nine or ten miles. The track of the wheels are marked with pieces of timber let into the road, for the wheels of the waggons to run on, by which means one horse is enabled to draw, and that with ease, fifty or fixty bushels of coals. There are many other branches of business that have much carriage in a regular track, that greatly want this improvement, which tends fo confiderably to the lowering the expences of carriage.

About five miles from Newcastle are the iron works, late Crawley's, fupposed to be among the greatest manufactories of the kind in Europe. Several hundred hands are employed in it, infomuch that 20,000l. a year is paid in wages. They earn from 1 s. to 2s. 6d. a day; and fome of the foremen fo high as 2007. a year. The quantity of iron they work up is very great, employing three ships to the Baltic, that each make ten voyages yearly, and bring feventy tons at a time, which amount to twenty-one hundred tons, befides five hundred tons more freighted in others. They use a good deal of American iron, which is as good as any Swedish, and

for

for fome purposes much better. They would ufe more of it if larger quantities were to be had, but they cannot get it. A circumftance the perfon did not fufficiently explain, but which, in the mere outline, is worthy of remark.

They use annually feven thousand bolls of coals, at fixteen bushels each.

They manufacture anchors as high as feventy hundred weight, carriages of cannon, hoes, fpades, axes, hooks, chains, &c. &c.

In general their greatest work is for exportation, and are employed very confiderably by the East India company: They have of late had a prodigious artillery demand from that company.

During the war their bufinefs was extremely great: It was worse upon the peace; but for anchors and mooring chains the demand these last feven or eight years has been very regular and fpirited. Their business in general, for fome time paft, has not been equal to what it was in the war.

As to the machines for accelerating feveral operations in the manufacture, the copper rollers for fqueezing bars into hoops, and the fciffars for cutting bars of iron-the turning cranes for moving anchors into and out of the fire-the beating hammer, lifted by the cogs of a wheel; thefe are machines of manifeft utility, fimple in their construc

tion,

tion, and all moved by water. But I cannot conceive the neceffity of their executing so much of the remaining work by manual labour. I obferved eight ftout fellows hammering an anchor in fpots, which might evidently be struck by a hammer, or hammers, moved by water upon a vast anvil, the anchor to be moved with the utmost ease and quickness, to vary the feat of the ftrokes. It is idle to object the difficulty of raifing fuch a machine; there are no impoffibilities in mechanics: An anchor of twenty tons may, undoubtedly, be managed with as much ease as a pin. In other works befides the anchor-making, I thought I obferved a waste of strength.

In the road from Newcastle to the works, upon rifing the first hill, there is a most noble view into an extenfive vale: Cultivated rifing inclosures, furrounding a prodigious fine water, (the river Tyne) which has the appearance of a lake, feveral miles long, and of a great breadth. In the middle an ifland of an irregular oblong shape, scattered with trees: The whole water enlivened with numerous boats, failing to and from Newcastle: The river loses itself at each end, under waving hills. Upon the whole it has the appearance of one of the finest lakes in the world. At Newcastle,

PROVI

A

Coals, per chaldron,

Their firing,

3

45.

Poor's house-rent, from 20 to 40s.

Land around Newcastle, letts, as may be fuppofed, extravagantly, from 40s. to 57.

an acre.

As I enter the extenfive county of NorthCumberland to-morrow, you must allow me to make the agriculture of it the subject of my next letter.

I remain, in the mean time, &c.

Newcastle.

LET