It was really like a dead forest, or like
thick-set masts of shipping in a thronged port; or the vents of
tellurian fires, which send up their flames by night and their
smoke by day. It was splendid, it was magnificent, it was
insurpassably picturesque. People must have painted it often, but
if some bravest artist-soul would come, reverently, not
patronizingly, and portray the sight in its naked ugliness, he
would create one of the most beautiful masterpieces in the world.
On our first morning the sun, when it climbed to the upper
heavens, found a little hole in the dun pall, and shone down
through it, and tried to pierce through the more immediate cloud
above the works; but it could not, and it ended by shutting the
hole under it, and disappearing.
Beyond the foul avenues thridding the region of the works, and
smelling of the decay of market-houses, were fine streets of
shops and churches, and I dare say comely dwellings, with tram-
cars ascending and descending their hilly slopes. The stores I
find noted as splendid, and in my pocket-book I say that outside
of the market-house, before you got to those streets, there are
doves and guinea-pigs as well as a raven for sale in cages; and
the usual horrible English display of flesh meats.
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