A stream had evidently disappointed them by
filtering through its bed of limestone, but this they had prevented by
forming a course of pebbles and cement, which ran right through
Tideswell, and served the double purpose of a water supply and a sewer.
We crossed the old "Rakes," or lines, where the Romans simply dug out
the ore and threw up the rubbish, which still remained in long lines.
Clever though they were, they only knew lead when it occurred in the
form known as galena, which looked like lead itself, and so they threw
out a more valuable ore, cerusite, or lead carbonate, and the heaps of
this valuable material were mined over a second time in comparatively
recent times. The miner of the Middle Ages made many soughs to drain
away the water from the mines, and we saw more of the tunnels that had
been made to draw air to the furnaces when wood was used for smelting
the lead.
The forest, like many others, had disappeared, and Anna Seward had
exactly described the country we were passing through when she wrote:
The long lone tracks of Tideswell's native moor,
Stretched on vast hills that far and near prevail.
Bleak, stony, bare, monotonous, and pale.
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