136 ALEXANDER GORDOK, THE ANTIQUARY. 



his project has been thought of a good many years ago, but it has 

 been judged the profits would not answer the charge." This may be 

 accepted as an index; of the general encouragement which he received 

 on his arrival in Edinburgh. His stay there accordingly was of the 

 bi-iefest. Within a week after he appears to have been in London, 

 and there to have spread out his six large sheets on which his pro- 

 jected canal was traced traversing the old Roman vallum, mile forts, 

 and military way, not only before the incredulous eyes of Mr. Roger 

 Gale and Lord Islay, but before Sir Robert Walpole himself. Mr. 

 Gale replies to his northern correspondent : 



"I told Mr Gordon my thoughts of his project to cut through the 

 Northern isthmus, very freely. I could not see what manner of 

 commerce could be so promoted by this new passage, as to pay the 

 immense expence it would require to perfect it ; at the same time 

 the public is so poor here, and so many necessary demands upon it, 

 that T am sure it will be impossible to obtain the least sum for such 

 experiments, and I believe your treasury in Scotland is not much 

 richer ; he has, however, communicated it to some great men. My 

 Lord Islay treated it, as 1 hear, with great contempt ; and if Sir 

 Robert Walpole gave it a more favourable reception, it proceeded 

 from the recommendation of Secretary Johnson, and from his usual 

 afiability and desire to dismiss everybody that applies to him as well 

 pleased as he can." The politic minister of George I., it would seem, 

 flattered the hopes of the enthusiastic projector with commendations 

 of a scheme which was ultimately proved to be not only practicable 

 but tiseful ; but it was not till fourteen years after Gordon's death, 

 and long after he had ceased to trouble himself either with the anti- 

 quities or the improvements of his native land, that Parliament gave 

 its sanction to the scheme for cutting a navigable canal between the 

 Forth and the Clyde. Still later the British Government aided the 

 work by contributing the sum of =£50,000 from the Scottish estates 

 forfeited in the rebellion of 174-5 ; and at length, in the year 1790, 

 vessels sailed from sea to sea over the track of the old Roman road 

 successively surveyed by Agricola, and by Lollius Urbicus, the pro- 

 praetor of Antoninus Pius. 



How long Gordon laboured in the vain endeavoiir to persuade the 

 men of his own day to undertake the construction of a navigable 

 passage across the Northern Isthmus, does not appear ; but when he 

 found the project was a bootless one, he once more betook himself to 



