Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/333

 *oi THE: HISTORY' .Bookli Such were the fire-hearths of the Gauls in the firft century f ; Such were the fire-hearths of the Welch in the i oth And fuch have continued among us very nearly to the prefent. Thefe were large enough am6ng the Gauls to allow the impo- sition of two or three caldrons upon therm, and to admit the ar- rangement of two or three fpits before them 9. And fuch appears from the mode fb lately remaining among us to have been equally the cafe among the Britons in the hour of hofpitality ; equally in England and in Gaul the guefts being feated by the fire, and the caldrons being all charged and the fpits all loaded with entire joints of meat 10. . - The firing of the primaeval Britons was certainly wood. The firing of the Roman Britons muft have been wood and charcoal!* The native Romans were certainly ignorant of that black in- flammable fuel which we now denominate Coal. There are no beds of it at all. within the compafsrf Italy. The great line of that fotfil feems tofweep.away round the globe from North* eaft to South- weft, not ranging at a diftance even from the ibuth-eafterly regions .of our own ifland, as is generally imagin- ed, but a&ually vifiting France and yet avoiding Italy. > But the primaeval Britons muft have certainly ufed it. In tfte diftri& particularly of our own Mancuoiumv to whofe foil nature has happily committed the precious depofit and in whole cells, pro^ vidence has kindly treafured up an inexhauftible abundance of it, the Britons could not have remained unapprized of the agreeable combuftible around them. The Mancunian rivulets not unfre- .quently bring down fragments of coal from their native moun- tains, the extremities of the ftiel often riling into day-light, and little pieces being waihed away by the neighbouring waters. A lid in the long and winding courfe of thefe various, currents the Bri- tons mn ft naturally have foon marked the ihining jetty ftones in the channel, and by the aid of accident or the force of reflexion haye found out the confiderable utility of them. But we can advance ftilj nearer to a certainty. Several pieces »of coal were found a few years ago in the bed of fand beneath the Roman road tQ Ribchefter, when both wire dug up at the conftrudlidxi of Mr.. Phillips's houfe in the Quay-ftreeu Two or three of them . were