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Chapter XIV of the book "THE VIRGINIAN: A Horseman Of the Plains," by Owen Wister is presented. It narrates the author's travel, passing through northwest to Fort Meade. It relates the author's conversation with two old companions, Shorty and Scipio le Moyne at the stage-coach about gold excitement at Rawhide.

It is now widely recognised that towns played a central role in the development of a new, more modern British economy and society in the years between 1700 and 1840. However, it is often assumed that the expansive element in urban society, the new social attitudes and cultural values that were helping to change patterns of consumer demand, to mobilise capital resources and to generate novel industrial processes and products, were confined to the great metropolis of London and the specialist ports, resorts and industrial towns whose growth attracted so much attention from contemporary observers. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to ignore the role played in this process by the established regional centres and historic county towns, many of which retained their importance well into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Their experiences during this period of substantial and sometimes dramatic change in the urban system encompass every possible permutation from explosive population growth to sullen stagnation and raise pertinent questions about the very nature of ‘success’ in the context of urban development. Rather than being passive spectators of a drama taking place elsewhere, regional and county centres were fully involved in the action. Status, fuctions and patterns of development A substantial number of the ‘Great and Good towns’ of early modern England fell into the category of county centres, towns whose social and economic influence over a broad hinterland beyond their immediate market area was recognised by their contemporary classification as ‘the capital of all the county’ or simply ‘county town’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The fabric of the urban environment experienced accelerating change during the course of the eighteenth century, and the pace of change in some towns, although by no means all, underwent a dramatic gearshift from the 1780s onwards. These changes were driven by rapid population growth and migration, and by technological innovation, leading to the mechanisation of transport and of many manufacturing processes. Central government and municipal authorities contributed very little to this metamorphosis, unlike the experience of many European cities. The traditional pattern of urban social geography, in which the well-to-do lived in the centres of towns and the poor in the suburbs, was shattered in many towns in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and replaced by suburban residential segregation based upon socio-economic status and the separation of home and work, in its turn dependent upon ease of transport. Everywhere it is a subtle, complex process of transformation. In some towns, such as Glasgow, it takes place within a generation. In other towns, unaffected by the first stages of industrialisation, it was the end of the nineteenth century before these processes had fully worked themselves out. Much of this growth and change had to be accommodated within ancient boundaries and administrative structures, creating problems of health, sanitation and housing upon an unprecedented scale. These problems were widely recognised by the 1830s, but it is the 1840s before central government begins to take the first tentative steps towards putting things right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The foundations The topography of British towns at the beginning of the sixteenth century was the product of the interaction between successive generations of men and women living in society, and the opportunities and constraints presented by their environment over the preceding millennium. Volume I of this work, more especially Chapters 8 and 16, gives an account of the medieval antecedents to this chapter. Of all the features of towns inherited from the medieval centuries, the street plan, once laid down, has proved to be the most enduring, matched only by the similar longevity of the boundaries of the burgage plots which composed the spaces between the streets. The layout of both could be profoundly affected by the line of any fortifications which might be present. By the end of the medieval period well over a hundred English and Welsh towns had been fortified, including Coventry, Southampton, Hereford and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, ‘the strength and magnificens of the waulling of this towne’, Leland thought, ‘far passith al the waulles of the cities of England and of most of the townes of Europa’. Numerous others, including Aylesbury, Chelmsford and Trowbridge, were not fortified, whilst in some cathedral cities the close formed a separate fortified enceinte, as at Salisbury. Many town walls were, by the beginning of this period, ruinous, and there was much encroaching and piecemeal destruction. A survey of Oswestry made in 1602 revealed great waste made on the castle, with stones carried away by the wagon load and whole towers taken down, with the gates of the town all very ruinous except Churchgate, where the burgesses had made their election house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of the region Urban growth in parts of northern England during the three centuries under review was spectacular even by the standards of the first industrial nation. It was spectacular in the literal sense that by the early decades of the nineteenth century not only business travellers but also tourists and social commentators were coming to marvel at the novel concentration of factories using fossil fuels in an urban setting in and around Manchester, and at the sheer scale of urban maritime and manufacturing activity in the other towns which were cohering and coalescing. The great industrial and commercial centres gathered up systems of satellite towns in their surrounding districts, conjuring up in one visiting mind the telling image of Manchester as a ‘diligent spider’ at the heart of its web of communications. These were accelerating developments, and they reached their most dramatic, interesting and historically important phase between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth, when these new towns were at their most raw, untrammelled, dramatic, exciting and threatening: ‘great human exploits’ which produced and distributed a cornucopia of goods under a shroud of infernal smoke and under conditions which visibly threatened life, health and social and political stability. Provincial urban developments within the North had turned it into a symbol of the future, which might or might not work in the longer term, and by the 1840s the urban concentrations of the region had become the cynosure of the informed contemporary gaze. It therefore makes sense to begin this survey with an analysis of the scale and scope of urbanization within the region in 1840, and then to examine the roots of these unprecedented phenomena and attempt to describe and explain their development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical Midlands is a concept which is difficult to pin down; to some extent it amounts to that area which is left when more distinctive provincial blocks are removed. For the purposes of this volume the Midlands is defined as the West Midland counties of Herefordshire and Shropshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, combined with the East Midland shires of Derby, Leicester and Rutland, Northampton, Nottingham and Lincoln. There do exist some natural features which help to define this region: uplands to the west and north and the Lincolnshire seacoast, but the southern border can only be defined in our period in terms of the weakening fringe of London's primary commercial region. This is shown by analysis of the bases of Londonbound carriers in 1684 where there is a marked reduction at about a ninety mile radius from the capital, leaving Worcestershire, mid Warwickshire and mid Leicestershire outside, but Northamptonshire within, London's region. It is no surprise to find that the major Midland towns all lie beyond this frontier. Yet the urban networks of the Midlands do have a self-contained and consistent character which justifies thinking in these terms. While the Midland towns by their very location had vital external links, most of them looked primarily to London or to other towns within the region. And they had a great deal in common, for much of the region suffered from poor communications in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it was a truism of contemporary thought that distance from navigable water necessarily discouraged economic growth: thus in 1722 it was said of Leicestershire that ‘being the most inland county in England, and consequently far from any sea or navigable rivers, you must not suppose it a county of any trade’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INDUSTRY AND INTERNAL TRADE Before the eighteenth century the records of individual craftsmen or firms are very rare, and local historians must rely on information culled from a variety of sources too wide for all to find mention here. For medieval and modern times evidence for local extractive-industries and for manufactures generally is likely to be found in deeds or charters, especially leases, in manorial court rolls, and in manorial and other financial accounts. Many of these records will be found in local record offices, but since the Crown was so often involved in the control and taxation of industry generally, and more directly with mining and metal working, the collections of such records in the Public Record Office must be tackled by the serious investigator. These include the Classes S.C.6 and D.L.29 (ministers' accounts), S.C.2 and D.L.30 (manorial rolls), and, especially for the aulnage tax on cloth in various counties and the royal mines of Devon and Cornwall, E.101 (Exchequer accounts various). Customs records can also throw light on local industry, as can the Exchequer special commissions and depositions mentioned below, the memoranda rolls, and the ancient correspondence of the Chancery and Exchequer. Not all the other collections at the Public Record Office which may contain information on local industry and trade in the medieval and early modern period can be noted here. For some, however, there are published calendars with indexes, and this will facilitate research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]