For a mile up the valley, we see traces of
the ground having been submerged. Immediately within the embankment,
on the right side of the streamlet, is the empty tower or by-wash,
that dismal monument of culpable negligence. We gazed on it with a
strange feeling, thinking how easy it would have been to demolish two
or three yards of it, so as to allow an innocuous outlet to the
pent-up waters. When we had satisfied our curiosity, we commenced a
toilsome march across the hills to a valley, in which there has lately
been formed a series of embankments for the saving up of water for the
supply of the inhabitants of Manchester. About six in the evening, we
reached a public-house called the 'Solitary Shepherd,' where we had
tea and a rest; after which, a short walk in the dusk of the evening
brought us to a station of the Manchester and Sheffield Railway, by
which we were speedily replaced in Manchester, thus accomplishing our
very interesting excursion in about ten hours.
My final reflections on what we had seen were of a mixed order.
Viewing the inundation as a calamity which might have been avoided by
a simple and inexpensive precaution, one could not but feel that it
stood up as a sore charge against human wisdom. That so huge a danger
should have been treated so lightly; that men should have gone on
squabbling about who should pay a mere trifle of money, when such
large interests and so many lives were threatened by its
non-expenditure, certainly presents our mercantile _laissez-faire_
system in a most disagreeable light.
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