No parallel can probably be found in th world, certainly none in England, to the rapid growth of the town and port of Barrow in Furness, in the ex-
ty years ago n att ling village with treme north-mest of Lancashire. Twen-Teed than 200 inhabitants, mot to" found on any map save the most minute in its details, and scarcely allowed a fow lines in the local gazetteer, Barrow now a seaport town possessing a population of some 76,000 engaged in almost every branch of commercial and industrial enterprise, and with lines of immense docks second to few towns in England, Barrow owes its first distinction to the construction of a line of railway in 1857, to carry iron ores, which were then ginning to become known, but which had hitherto been shipped in small craft from a wooden pier exposed to the gales of the Irish Sea. In its early days it grew bat slowly till, in 1859, Messrs. Schneider and Ca. commenced the cree! of blast furnaces the iron, hematitic in nature, was found of excellent quality, and. admire ably adapted for conversion into steel by the Bessemer or other processes. This led to the commencement, in 1863, if the "Barrow Hematite Steel Ca." whose works, covering a space of some 25 acres, are probably the largest and most complete in the country; and these in turn led to the introduction of other industries. Barrow may thus be said to be about the same age as the foreign settlement at Shanghai, though in the matter of population it seems to have somewhat outrun the great commercial emporium of the Far East. In other respects, Barrow in Furness is ahead of ourselves, and it is worth while asking whence so great a difference has arisen, In our burry to increase, we forgot for the nonce all care for the sanitary condition of the city we were building; nay more, built it in such a style with crowded, crooked and narrow streets, that it already bears within it the seeds of its own destruction; we fought and fought over every inch of the muddy fore-shore, till we caused the serious deterioration of our harbour; and after twenty odd years of this, we are only now finding out our mistake, and how much better we might have been, hiad we been guided by a little foresight, Even now, as a community, we look upon the man rather as a bore, who points out the inevitable consequences of such a state of affairs; and hardly give the active support we ought, to those who urge the necessity for remedying past errors.
Barrow then is about the same ago as the Foreign Settlements, and contains let us say an equal population, Let us see what Barrow has provided, and-compare it with Shang. hai, "The town, running from south east to north-west, may be said to be angolar in form, and covers a space of rather more than 2,000 acres, its greatest length being some two or three miles. The streets are well laid out at right angles, and many of them are wide and spacious, Many works of ious sorts have been established in this space; ship-building yards, en: gineering works and graving docks one firm having contracted for a line of six steamers of 5,000 tons burden ench, to trade between Barrow and Canada. There are timber yards and engine and boiler works; steam rope and wire works, manufac-tares of railway plant, and flux and jute works, not to speak of the lines of docks and the iron works mentioned above. It has-a town hall, Municipal offices and market place, a commo-dions theatre, baths and wash houses, a working Mon's Clab, and several handsome' churches, in addition to several large nnd elegantly fitted up hotels. The attraction of Barzow in Varnem in bow aver, its miageitomt docks, which exceed in area the whole of those on the Liverpool side of the Mersey, covering some 350 or more acres, One dock, the Devonshire,. is 2,500 feet in length, another, the Bucclough, 3000 feet. When the works now in: progress are completed, the water area of the Barrow docks' will be 360 acres, with wharves adjoin 200 acres in extent, and covered wi ware-houses four stories high. Some thousands of mani are employed on these worke, which are being pushed forward
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.