Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/233

Rh for some time in Birmingham. Capern had made his pilgrimage to it soon after he came to the town to reside; so we arranged to visit it together, and on the seventh of November we set out on our walk. Meeting an extensive brick-maker, we stopped to see his establishment near the Old Hill Station, but a little way from Halesowen. Here he was carrying on a large business in the manufacture of blue-black bricks of every size and pattern for coping of walls, stable floors, and other uses. He had expended £7,000 in buildings and machinery, and was turning out about 100,000 bricks a week. Here was another specimen of the riches and resources which Nature has stored away in the cellars of The Black Country. The space from which he had taken the clay for 100,000 bricks a week for several years would not measure over half an acre, embracing the whole compass of the pit's mouth. The crater is already sixty feet deep, and the clay, he thinks, will hold good for twice that depth. It is what we call in America "dyed in the wool," and not in the burning. The establishment embraces the latest improvements in brick-making, and all the mechanical forces are utilized to their utmost capacity. The steam-engine, for instance, draws up on an inclined tramway from the bottom of the pit a huge coal-scuttle full of the clay, enough to make 500 bricks, and tips it over at the top of the line into