Mrs Gymnast was a graceful, slender woman of exquisite symmetry, some seven-and-twenty years old. Miss Apprentice, though nineteen, was no taller than many girls five years her junior, but had the limbs and muscles of a young giantess.
Sir William Fairbairn, in his well-known book _Mills and Millwork_, dismisses the subject of windmills in thirteen pages, and much of this scant notice is occupied with an antiquarian rather than an engineering inquiry into the history and birthplace of windmills; proving that even ere he wrote, the ‘Wind’ age had merged and lost itself in its all-powerful successor the ‘Steam’ age. The gist of the matter is thus summed up by Sir William: ‘It is more probable that we are indebted to the Dutch for our improved knowledge of windmills, and wind as a motive-power; and it is within my own recollection that the whole of the eastern coasts of England and Scotland were studded with windmills, and that for a considerable distance into the interior of the country. Half a century ago, nearly the whole of the grinding, stamping, sawing, and draining was done by wind in the flat counties; and no one could enter any of the towns in Northumberland, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, or Norfolk but must have remarked the numerous windmills spreading their sails to catch the breeze. Such was the state of our windmills sixty years ago; and nearly the whole of our machinery depended on wind, or on water where the necessary fall could be secured. These sources of power have nearly been abandoned in this country, having been replaced by the all-pervading power of steam. This being the case, wind as a motive-power may be considered as a thing of the past, and a short notice will therefore suffice.’ Thus Sir William Fairbairn dismisses the subject.
The ‘English Windmill Epoch,’ as it may be termed, reached its zenith between the middle of the last century and the close of the first quarter of our own. During this period, Andrew Meikle, John Smeaton, and Sir William Cubitt lived and worked; and to this period belong all the experiments and literature concerning windmills which we possess; for since this period, the introduction of steam has resulted in an almost entire abandonment of wind-power, save in certain cases, to which we shall presently refer. The advantages undoubtedly possessed by wind over steam as a prime mover—economy in first cost, very low working expenses, and great simplicity in construction—are more than counterbalanced by the uncertainty experienced in its employment. Cases, however, there now are in which wind-power is employed, and with appreciable advantage, or it would, as elsewhere, have been superseded. From Guernsey, a large export trade is carried on in granite, from quarries situated in the northern and eastern parts of the island. These quarries, sunk in some places to great depths, are invariably drained by small four-armed windmills, erected on timber uprights, and actuating bucket-pumps. Driven by the constant sea and land breezes, these little mills, dotted about over the landscape, have small difficulty in draining the quarries of the accumulated rainfall, which, owing to the comparative absence of springs and streams, is the only source of flooding. Should a calm render the pumps idle, a few weeks’ accumulation of rain does not hinder the quarrymen; whilst a cessation of wind for even a week is a very rare occurrence.