AND PROTECTION OF AGRICULTURAL LAND. 47 



tion of the land was a very secondary affair, it being a railway, 

 and not a reclamation scheme. 



The Dee. 



I have already described the works of the Eiver Dee Company. 

 My own opinion is, that had they been originally designed as 

 low rubble training walls to guide the channel by judicious lines 

 through the estuary, instead of confining it by a high embank- 

 ment to the south side, it would not only have been better for the 

 navigation, but more for the interests of the Dee Company. 

 However, the following extract from a letter addressed by W. J. 

 Hamilton, Esq., the chairman of the company, in 1845, to the 

 Tidal Harbours Commission, who were then holding an inquiry 

 at Chester, describes the financial position of the company as 

 follows* : " The citizens of Chester, not having either the means 

 or inclination to make any efficient improvements of their har- 

 bour, certain individuals, afterwards incorporated as the Kiver 

 Dee Company (in 1732), undertook to do so on having, as a com- 

 pensation for the outlay of their capital, a grant of the White 

 Sands, then of no value whatever, with the right of imposing 

 tolls for the use of the improved navigation. Upon this agree- 

 ment the undertakers laid out nearly L.80,000 a large sum one 

 hundred years ago in making the present channel and outlets for 

 the river in lieu of the numerous streams through which the 

 river at that time flowed over the estuary, upon which out- 

 lay the original subscribers received no dividends or return for 

 nearly the first fifty years, and those who have since represented 



* Tidal Harbours Commission, 1845, p. 318. 



