In a circle hardly a third of a mile in diameter, there was the heaviest crop of oats growing that I had yet seen in England; in another part of the same field there was a large brick-kiln; in another, an extensive quarry and machinery for sawing the stone into all sizes and shapes; then a furnace for casting iron, and lastly, a coal mine; and all these departments of labor and production were in full operation.

It is quite possible that not one of the hundred laborers on and under this ten-acre patch ever thought it an extraordinary focus of production.

Perhaps even the proprietors and managers of the five different enterprises worked on the small space had taken its rich and diversified fertilities as a matter of course, as we take the rain, light and heat of summer; but to a traveller "taking stock" of a country's resources, it could not but be a point of view exciting admiration.

I left it behind me deeply impressed with the conviction that I had seen the most productive ten-acre field that could be found on the surface of the globe, counting in the variety and value of its surface and sub-surface crops.
I took tea with a friend in Leeds, remaining only an hour or two in that town, then pursuing my course northward.

The wide world knows so much of Leeds that any notice that I could give of it might seem affected and presumptuous.