color. Harvesting is done in August and September. Wheat, rye, barley and
potatoes are the staple products. No corn is cultivated in northern
England. Wood is so scarce and dear in Great Britain, as well as upon the
continent, that the farmers can not afford to build rail-fences.
Hedge-fences, walls and ditches, therefore, take their places in every
European country. All this is new to the American when he first comes to
the Old World. Pass some fields of clover still in bloom. See men mow with
the same "German" scythes that we use in America. We reached Chester
before noon. This is one of the oldest cities, if not the oldest in the
country. Here one sees the England of his dreams, the England he so long
desired to see, and which now presents to his gaze, as it were in a focus,
both the monuments and the rubbish of many ages. It was once a great
military station of the Romans in Britain, who called it the City of
Legions. King Æthelfrith reduced it to ruins in the year 607, and it
remained "a waste chester" (a waste castra or fortification) for three
centuries. The Danes made its walls a stronghold against Alfred and
Æthelred, and the Lady of the Mercians, who was the daughter of Alfred and
the wife of Æthelred, recognized the importance of the place, and built it
up again. It was the last city in England to hold out against William the
Conqueror. During the Civil Wars the city adhered to the royal cause, and
was besieged and taken by the Parliamentary forces in 1645. The _Phoenix
Tower_ bears the incription: _King Charles stood on this tower September_
24, 1645, _and saw his army defeated on Rowton Moor_.

_The Rows_ are a very curious feature of the two principal streets running
at right angles to each other. Besides the ordinary walks or pavements of
these streets, there is a continuous covered gallery through the front of
the second story. Some one has said, "Great is the puzzle of the stranger
as to whether the roadway is down in the cellar, or he is upstairs on the
landing, or the house has turned outside of the window." On this "upstairs