Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/17



a stranger, landing at the extremity of England, were to traverse the whole of Cornwall and the North of Devonshire; and crossing to St. David's, should make the tour of all North Wales; and passing thence through Cumberland, by the Isle of Man, to the south-western shore of Scotland, should proceed either through the hilly region of the Border Counties, or, along the Grampians, to the German Ocean; he would conclude from such a journey of many hundred miles, that Britain was a thinly peopled sterile region, whose principal inhabitants were miners and mountaineers.

Another foreigner, arriving on the coast of Devon, and crossing the Midland Counties, from the mouth of the Exe, to that of the Tyne, would find a continued succession of fertile hills and valleys, thickly overspread with towns and cities, and in many parts crowded with a manufacturing population, whose industry is maintained by the coal with which the strata of these districts are abundantly interspersed.