[transcript: Position-19; In the outskirts of the town, eight miles up-river from Belfast, northeastern Ireland. Direction: Southeast, i.e., towards the Irish Sea, Liverpool and North Wales. are some of the mills you see yonder. The grass has been cut and the hay stacked, as you see, so that the whole space of the field can be used if necessary. Notice the heaps of cloth in the distance either ready for spreading or just gathered up after taking its turn at the dew and sunshine, Observe also how high the sides of the cart are built, so as to hold a big load without danger of spilling on the road.
Great quantities of flax for such linens are grown here in northern Ireland; the best linens in the world are woven in Belfast and a few other places in County Antrim. First the stalks of flax grbwing in the fields were cut and dried. Then they were soaked to soften the outer bark, and beaten till the bundles of long, tough fibres within the stalk could be pulled out. Next those bundles of fibres were raked and combed till they separated into small fibres like fine threads, but of course only as long as the stalk was tall. Then came the spinning which twisted the slender fibres in such a way as to make them wind tight around each other at the ends, forming a continuous thread perhaps hundreds or yards long. After that, the threads from a grea't number of reels were arranged to roll off sid' by side and close together, forming the warp or lengthwise threads of a web of linen, and other threads, their reels held in steel shuttles, passed swiftly back and forth and back and forth and back and forth through the warp threads, each time over some and under others, till they formed a close, tight mesh. And here are some of those very webs now, being shrunken and bleached ready for sale and export.]
From Notes of Travel, No. 18, copyright,by Underwood & Underwood.
Bleaching linen in the fields at Lisburn, near Belfast, Ireland.
Blanchissant du lin dans les campagnes de Lisburn pres de Belfast, Irlande.
[German Translation]
Blanqueando lino en los campos en Lisburn, cerca de Belfast, Irlanda.
Blekning af linne pa falten vid Lisburn, nara Belfast, Inland.
[translation]
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