November 1st, 1872. Cloudy; a little rain.

At ten o'clock in the morning we left Mr. Wilson's house in Sheffield to catch a train at Midland Station. Mr. Wilson and his brother accompanied us to the station. From here we travelled across Derbyshire. The countryside was all flat, and after forty-four miles we arrived at Burton-on-Trent, a town in Staffordshire, where beer was brewed. We alighted here to visit one of the breweries.

The Allsopp family's brewery was a very large concern, occupying almost the whole town. They had arranged for a meal to be prepared and, after meeting us at the station, entertained us to lunch in the board-room. After lunch we went to the brewery, which occupied about fifty acres. It was like a small town in itself: the site was criss-crossed by twelve miles of roadway. Since we could not have visited the whole brewery on foot in half a day, a railway wagon had been carpeted and provided with seats to convey us along tracks inside the premises. After a quick tour of the different parts of the brewery, we were shown, briefly, the brewing process. Below ground level were the cellars, where there were a total of 10,000 casks. We were told that these would all be dispatched in the coming month, and that some of them would even find their way to Japan.