Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/160

146 might fancy the castellated ridge was Mount Olympus, and that the only god at home was Vulcan. The ancients could not have conceived of a more proper throne for the great deity of the hammer. The little fore-shortened mountain wooded from the level fields below to the tops of the walls, is just high enough for the dais of the throne. Then the whole height looks as if a hundred Cyclops had been mining, counter-mining, and undermining it with caverns, half of which have fallen in, leaving gullies and gorges one hundred feet deep, all overgrown with tall trees, showing how long ago the roofage broke down. The winding walks around these green precipices and huge caverns all favour the fancy of Vulcan's throne. Then there is another coincidence that gives the aspect of real fact to the illusion. The Earl of Dudley, who owns the Castle and nearly all that can be seen from it with the naked eye, is a veritable Vulcan in himself. He not only owns many of the coal and iron mines of the district, but is one of the most extensive iron-workers in South Staffordshire. And it is a distinctive peculiarity of his Vulcanic operations, that he works his own minerals exclusively and only. The iron ore, coal, and lime are all his own, taken from his own estates. He entered upon this field of enterprise only about ten years ago, when the iron trade of the district had considerably deteriorated in