Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/263

Rh a walk through the village without meeting man, woman, child, or dog, we returned to "The Bell." On our way we witnessed a phenomenon which we should have missed if we had remained indoors for the evening. We found ourselves, apparently, midway between two vast burning prairies. Their red and rising flames seemed to be approaching us from the east and west. Both horizons were lighted half-way up the heavens with the lurid waves, which arose and fell and twisted and crested themselves with the fleecy clouds. The sight was really sublime when invested with the fancy that we were between two vast prairie fires gradually nearing each other and consuming the intervening space. But it was only the nightly performance of the Eastern and Western Lights of the two black countries of Staffordshire and Shropshire. The two great armies of furnaces and forges were apparently drawn up in lines vis à vis, but not in hostile array. It was a mere field-night of their practice; and all the parks of their heavy ordnance fired only blank cartridges into the heavens. Still, no performance at Aldershott or Vincennes could equal the spectacle which we witnessed from the green border-land between these two regions of fire and smoke that seem marching against each other with all their unlimbered artillery and lighted matches by night.