114 DROITWICH.

of the aborigines of this country. Habingdon declares that the salt springs had been here "from the tyme of Noe's flud;" and the good old gentleman almost prostrates himself in admiration of these bountiful supplies of Nature, of the fine quality of the brine, and the gentility of the good burgesses of the town; for although Leland had complained that the Bait-makers were poor,in consequence of "certain gentlemen" getting the profit, Habingdon asserts that "at thys instant they are of that generous disposition as they are ryghtly called ye gentlemen of Wych." Leland says, "The town itself is somewhat foul and dirty, and the people that be about the furnaces be very ill-coloured." We must take Leland as a set-off against Habingdon. It is believed that Droitwich was the Salina of the Romans, and that long before their occupancy of this island there were two great roads, the upper and lower " Saltway," leading from Droitwich, one over the Lickey to Birmingham and the seacoast of Lincolnshire, and the other crossing the county of Worcester to the coast of Hampshire. The salt trade, however, was a very restricted one, and carried on only in summer and autumn, until a comparatively modern period, owing to the state of the highways. It is mentioned in the earliest records of many of the surrounding parishes and manors, which were bound to furnish a given quantity of wood annually to the salt-works, to be used as fuel, long before coal was thought of, and in return for which so much salt was supplied to the said parishes and manors, and no doubt retailed at pretty profits by the lords of the same to the surrounding populations. In the course of centuries the forests of this part of Worcestershire bore evidence of the great drain that had been made upon their supplies. Drayton, the poet, deplored the damage done to the forest of Feckenham—his favourite wood-nymph, "with the twisted curls,"

" Whose beauties many a morn have blest my longing eyes,"

and at length it became evident that a substitute for the old