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did more wonders in a day than these fine fellows. The best
slate of Honister Crag is found near the top: and there,
many hundred feet aloft, may be seen (by good eyes) the
slate-built hovels of some of the quarrymen, while others
ascend and descend many times between morning and night. Now
the men come leaping down with their trucks at a speed which
appears appalling to strangers. Formerly, the slate was
brought down on hurdles, on men's backs: and the practice is
still continued in some remote quarries, where the expense
of conveyance by carts would be too great, or the roads do
not admit of it. Nearly forty years ago there was a man
named Joseph Clark at Honister, who made seventeen journeys,
(including seventeen miles of climbing up and scrambling
down,) in one day, bringing down 10,880 pounds of slate. In
ascending he carried the hurdle, weighing eighty pounds; and
in descending, he brought each time 640 pounds of slate. At
another time he carried, in three successive journeys, 1,280
pounds each time. His greatest day's work was bringing
11,771 pounds; in how many journeys it is not remembered:
but in fewer than seventeen. He lived at Stonethwaite, three
miles from his place of work. His toils did not appear to
injure him: and he declared that he suffered only from
thirst. It was believed in his day that there was scarcely
another man in the kingdom capable of sustaining such labour
for a course of years.
In some places where the slate is closely compacted, and
presents endways and perpendicular surface, the quarryman
sets about his work as if he were going
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