springing up around them, including the Mid-Wales, the first sod of which was to be cut in a few days’ time, with what strange accompaniment will be noted in a subsequent chapter.  Not until the health of the Press,—“may its perfect independence ever expose abuses and advocate what is just, through evil and through good report,”—had been duly honoured did the company disperse.

The workmen, too, were entertained, with good fare and more speeches.  Salvers and cake baskets were presented to Messrs. Davies and Savin.  Master Edward Davies, aged 5, and Master Tom Savin, aged 6, were held up aloft, and presented with watches, and the cheering, which had gone on almost continuously for hours, broke forth afresh.  One of the workmen, who was also, at any rate, in the opinion of his colleagues, something of a poet, stepped forward, and, “amidst roars of laughter and tremendous cheering,” sang his thanks as follows:—

Well now we’ve got a railway,
  The truth to you I’ll tell,
To be opened in August,
  The people like it well;
We’ve heard a deal of rumour
  O’er all the country wide,
We’ll never get a railway,
  The people can’t provide.

Well now we have the carriages,
  For pleasure trips to ride;
The Milford it shall run us,
  And Henry lad shall drive;
There’s also Jack the stoker,
  So handy and so free,
He lives now at Llandiman,
  A buxom lad is he.

We have a first rate gentleman
  Who does very nigh us dwell,
And he has got a partner,
  The people like him well;
Look at the trucks my boys,
  Their names you’ll plainly see;
They’ve took another Railway,
  There’s plenty of work for we.

Well now our gen’rous masters
  Do handsomely provide
A store of meat and drink my boys,
  Come out and take a ride;
For we are in our ribbons,
  And dress’d so neat and trim;
Drink up my charming Sally,
  We’ll fill it to the brim.

When these few days are over,
  The navvies they will part,
And go back to their gangers
  With blithe and cheerful heart;
And Jack he will be hooting,
  And getting drunk full soon;
I wish there was a railway
To be opened every moon.

And now I have to finish,
  And shall conclude my song;
I hope and trust my good friends,
  I’ve stated nothing wrong;
All you young men and maidens,
  That are so full of play,
I hope you’ll all take tickets
  On that most glorious day.

“When the song was concluded, Colonel Wynn purchased the first copy, for which the fortunate bard received a shilling.  Several other gentlemen followed this example, and the poet must have regretted that his stock in trade was so limited.

“During the latter part of the proceedings, several had left the enclosure to join the merry dance, to the strains of the Welshpool Band, in the adjoining field.  We cannot use the usual stock phrase of the penny-a-liner and say to ‘trip it on the light fantastic toe,’ for in several instances a pair of stalwart navvies might be seen in anything but dancing pumps kicking out most gloriously.  In another part of the field, a party were deeply engaged in an exciting game of football.  All was mirth and jollity.  From the oldest to the youngest, the richest to the poorest, every one seemed to try to get as much enjoyment out of the evening as possible, and if there were any grumblers to be found at Messrs. Davies and Savin’s monster picnic, the fault must have been with themselves.

“The same evening rejoicings were being kept up at Llanidloes.  All the school children of the place were feasted in the tent.  Mr. Whalley (the ‘champion of the people’s rights,’ as the flag had it) was chaired through the town, and the evening was finished by a ball.  And on the following day, several loaves of bread and gallons of porter were sent by Messrs. Davies and Savin to the poor people of Llandinam.”  Finally, a medal was struck in commemoration of the event, and presented to the workmen.

Thus, sixty-three years ago, did the community, already conscious of the momentous influence the steam engine was exerting upon the social and economic condition of the countryside, but yet to discover the not less remarkable potentialities of the electric or the petrol spark applied to the problems of transport, herald the birth of the infant Cambrian.

CHAPTER III.  EARLY DEVELOPMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES.

“We may perceive plenty of wrong turns taken at cross roads, time misused or wasted, gold taken for dross and dross for gold, manful effort mis-directed, facts misread, men misjudged.  And yet those who have felt life no stage play, but a hard campaign with some lost battles, may still resist all spirit of general insurgence in the evening of their day.”—Viscount Morley of Blackburn.

Though one or two earlier bubbles, blown by eager railway promoters, had burst almost as they left the bowl of the pipe, the issue of the prospectus of the Montgomeryshire Railways Company, in 1852, not unnaturally inspired new hope in the border counties of some extension of already projected lines in the locality.  At Oswestry, in particular, there was a rapidly growing feeling that such a development was overdue, and they looked with eager eyes towards the possibility of forging a connecting link with the system growing up in the heart of Powysland.  The Shrewsbury and Chester Railway, soon to become part of the Great Western, had opened its branch to the busy Shropshire market centre under the hills at the beginning of 1849,—the year which saw the birth of the Oswestry Market and of the “Oswestry Advertizer,” which, in its earlier years, was to devote so many pages to the record of the making of the Cambrian.  But beyond Oswestry travellers had to proceed by coach.  The

“Royal Oak,” leaving the town daily at one o’clock, arrived at Newtown about five.  Goods were carried by more ponderous road transport, and it is rather astonishing to recal that as late as 1853 dogs were employed as draught animals, and local records include the circumstance of the death of a “respected tradesman” by a fall from his horse, caused by the animal’s “fright at one of the carts drawn by the dogs, which are much too often seen on the roads in this neighbourhood.”  Legislation was soon to prohibit this custom, and railways to make it unnecessary.

It was, then, in an Oswestry of very different social habits to those of to-day that, on June 23rd, 1853, the townspeople assembled at the call of the Mayor, Mr. William Hodges, to consider the question of a possible extension of the “Montgomeryshire Railway,” in their direction, which was declared by resolution to be the “only scheme before Parliament capable of effecting this most desirable object.”

But