Over the horizon and the lower part of the sky a thin grey veil had come--a veil of smoke.

We were approaching the manufacturing districts.

Grander and grander grew the country, less and less pure the colouring.

The vegetation was rich almost to rankness; the well-wooded distances were heavily grey.

Then tall chimneys poured smoke over the landscape and eclipsed the sun; and through strangely shaped furnaces and chimneys of many forms, which here poured fire from their throats like dragons, and there might have been the huge retorts and chemical apparatus of some giant alchemist, we ran into the station of a manufacturing town.
I gazed at the high blackened warehouses, chimneys, and furnaces, which loomed out of the stifling smoke and clanging noises, with horror and wonder.
"What a dreadful place!" I exclaimed.