Читать книгу The Pedestrian's Guide through North Wales. A tour performed in 1837 онлайн

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The latter at that moment popping his head in at the door, “Coach ready, sir, if you please!”

“I’m glad of it; what’s to pay, my girl?”

“Three and sixpence for dinner, sir, if you please, and threepence for ale.”

“Experience makes fools wise,”

I exclaimed, as with an empty stomach I reseated myself upon the box.

“St—st—go along! a fine town this, sir!”

“Is it?”

“Don’t you think so, sir?

“I never was in such a half starved, hungry looking place in my life,” cried I, at that time feeling the cravings of nature strong within me, and fancying I saw the ghost of a London cook shop, flitting before my eyes.

The road from Birmingham to Shrewsbury, if travelled by night, gives a stranger a glowing idea of the “fiery regions,” never mentioned to “ears polite.” No description can come up to the flaming reality exhibited in the appearance of this country; hundreds of hills of burning coke blaze in all directions, and the air is scarcely endurable from the gaseous qualities of the smoke, which sweeps across the road in huge columns, almost suffocating every passenger who ventures upon that dismal tract.