226 THE DIRECTORS BECOME ALARMED. CHAP. XII. 



pended against the wall of the directors' room, the 

 amount of excavation, embankment, &c., executed from 

 r time to time. But on many of these occasions, Mr. 

 Dixon had no progress whatever to show for the money 

 expended upon the Chat Moss embankment. Sometimes, 

 indeed, the visible work done was less than it had 

 appeared a fortnight or a month before ! 



The directors now became seriously alarmed, and 

 feared that the evil prognostications of the eminent 

 engineers were about to be fulfilled. The resident 

 himself was greatly disheartened, and he was even called 

 upon to supply the directors with an estimate of the cost 

 of filling up the Moss with solid stuff from the bottom, 

 as also the cost of piling the roadway, and in effect, 

 constructing a four mile viaduct of timber across the 

 Moss, from twenty to thirty feet high. But the expense 

 appalled the directors, and the question then arose, 

 whether the work was to be proceeded with or aban- 

 doned ! 



Mr. Stephenson himself afterwards described the alarm- 

 ing position of affairs at a public dinner given at 

 Birmingham, on the 23rd of December, 1837, on the 

 occasion of a piece of plate being presented to his son, 

 on the completion of the London and Birmingham Bail- 

 way. He related the anecdote, he said, for the purpose 

 of impressing upon the minds of those who heard him 

 the necessity of perseverance. 



" After working for weeks and weeks," said he, " in 

 filling in materials to form the road, there did not yet 

 appear to be the least sign of our being able to raise the 

 solid embankment one single inch ; in short we went on 

 filling in without the slightest apparent effect. Even 

 my assistants began to feel uneasy, and to doubt of the 

 success of the scheme. The directors, too, spoke of it as 

 a hopeless task : and at length they became seriously 

 alarmed, so much so, indeed, that a board meeting was 

 held on Chat Moss to decide whether I should proceed 



