418 AHDEOSSAN AND WEAVER CANALS. PART VIII. 



are few of them but would be so haunted by the ghosts 

 of wrecked speculations that they could scarcely lay 

 their heads upon their pillows for a single night in 

 peace. 



While the Caledonian Canal was in progress, Mr. 

 Telford was occupied in various works of a similar 

 kind in England and Scotland, and also one in Sweden. 

 In 1804, while on one of his journeys to the north, he 

 was requested by the Earl of Eglinton and others to 

 examine a project for making a canal from Glasgow to 

 Saltcoats and Ardrossan, on the north-western coast 

 of the county of Ayr, passing near the important 

 manufacturing town of Paisley. A new survey of the 

 line was made, and the works were carried on during 

 several successive years until a very fine capacious canal 

 was completed, on the same level, as far as Paisley and 

 Johnstown. But the funds of the company falling short, 

 the works were stopped, and the canal was carried no 

 further. Besides, the measures so actively employed by 

 the Clyde Trustees to deepen the bed of that river and 

 enable ships of large burden to pass up as high as Glas- 

 gow, had proved so successful that the ultimate exten- 

 sion of the canal to Ardrossan, so as to avoid the shoals 

 of the Clyde, was no longer necessary, and the prose- 

 cution of the work was accordingly abandoned. But as 

 Mr. Telford has observed, no person suspected, when 

 the canal was laid out in 1805, "that steamboats would 

 not only monopolise' the trade of the Clyde, but pene- 

 trate into every creek where there is water to float them, 

 in the British Isles and. the continent of Europe, and be 

 seen in every quarter of the world." 



Another of the navigations on which Mr. Telford 

 was long employed was that of the river Weaver in 

 Cheshire. It w^as only twenty-four miles in extent, 

 but of considerable importance to the country through 

 which it passed, accommodating the salt-manufacturing 

 districts, of which the towns of Nantwich, Northwich, and 



