70 RISEN B V PERSE VERANCE. 



Renfrew and Ayr to the river Garnock, which flows into tlie 

 Atlantic opposite to the Isle of Arran. More recently, a 

 branch was extended from its north-eastern extremity, along 

 the south bank of the Forth, as far as Edinburgh , so 

 that the whole now forms an uninterrupted line of canal 

 navigation from the east to the west coast of Scotland. The 

 famous Caledonian Canal, in the north of Scotland, also 

 unites the two opposite seas, and indeed runs pretty nearly 

 parallel to a part of the line that has just been described. 

 It was commenced in 1802, under the management of Mr. 

 Telford, who conducted it throughout, and was first opened 

 on the 23d of October 1822. The distance between the 

 German and the Atlantic Oceans, measured in the direction 

 of this canal, is two hundred and fifty miles ; but of this 

 nearly two hundred and thirty miles, consisting of friths 

 and lakes, were already navigable. The canal itself, there- 

 fore, which has cost about a million of pounds sterling, is 

 only, properly speaking, about twenty miles in length ; and, 

 had not steam navigation been fortunately discovered while 

 the work was going on, there seems every reason to believe 

 that the cut would have been nearly useless. 



The entire length of the canal navigation already formed 

 in Great Britain and Ireland exceeds four thousand seven 

 hundred miles. The whole of this is the creation of less 

 than a century, during which period, therefore, consider- 

 ably above forty miles of canal may be said to have been 

 produced every year — a truly extraordinary evidence of the 

 spirit and resources of a country which has been able to 

 continue so large an expenditure for so long a time on a 

 single object, and which has in a single year, during that 

 period, spent almost as much money upon war as all those 



