The High Level Bridge allows ships of any height to pass under its lofty and graceful arches, which look so light, but are yet so strong.  This splendid bridge is an enduring monument of Robert Stephenson, whose work it was; and the story of its erection, at the cost of nearly half a million of money, makes most interesting reading.  It took nearly two and a half years to build, and was opened for traffic in 1849—­little more than three years after the first pile was driven in.  A few months later, in 1850, the newly built Central Station, with its imposing portico, was opened by Queen Victoria.

Passing down the Tyne from Newcastle, which requires separate notice, and Walker, with its reminiscences of “Walker Pit’s deun weel for me,” we arrive at Wallsend, which in twenty-five years has grown from a colliery village with a population of 4,000 to a town of 23,000 inhabitants.  Here are great shipbuilding and repairing yards, chemical works and cement works; here, too, are Parsons’ Steam Turbine Works, where was designed and built the little “Turbinia,” on which tiny vessel the early experiments were made with the new engines; and here are the famous mines which have made “Best Wallsend” a synonym for best household coal all over the land.  These mines, after having been closed for many years, were reopened at the beginning of the century, and now turn out upwards of one thousand tons of coal per day.

The church of St. Peter, at Wallsend, is little more than a hundred years old; the old Church of Holy Cross, now long disused, was built towards the end of the twelfth century.  But Wallsend itself, as all the world knows, is of much greater antiquity, for was it not, as its name proclaims, situated at the end of the Great Wall?  Its name then, however, was not Wallsend but Segedunum.

Willington Quay, further down the river, was, for a time, the home of George Stephenson, and here his son, Robert, was born.  At Howdon, which used to be known as Howdon Pans, from the salt-pans there, the painter John Martin and his brothers once worked when boys, being employed in some rope-works.  Here, too, the Henzells, a family of refugees who settled in the district in the days of Elizabeth, founded some glass works, for which industry the Tyne has been famous from that day to this.

[Illustration:  THE RIVER TYNE AT NEWCASTLE (showing Swing Bridge open).]

Before the railway on the south side of the river was laid down, passengers who wished to reach Jarrow had to alight at Howdon and cross the river; and a racy dialect song—­“Howdon for Jarrow” with its refrain of “Howdon for Jarra—­ma hinnies, loup oot”—­commemorates the fact.  Willington Quay and Howdon carry on the line of shipbuilding yards to Northumberland Dock and the staithes of the Tyne Commissioners, where the waggon ways from various collieries bring the coal to the water’s edge.  Tyne Dock, just opposite, and the Albert Edward Dock near North.  Shields,