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bridges over the most difficult ravines and passes and the most 
formidable kind of rivers. There was in all this difficult country- 
ample room for varied engineering practice, which was throughout 
of a most successful type. Besides all this Government work, he 
carried on an extensive private practice, involving the expenditure 
of about £180,000. He was also employed by Government to 
design and erect forty churches in outlying districts and lonely 
islands. 
In 1828 he was appointed engineer to the Scottish Fishery Board, 
and designed and superintended the execution of very many useful 
harbours, as for example at Burnmoutk, Coldingham, and Dunglass, 
in Berwickshire, at Buckhaven and Cellardyke on the Fife coast, as 
well as at various fishing stations on the coasts of Caithness and 
among the Hebrides. The large fishing harbour at Dunbar, which 
cost nearly £40,000, was also one of Mitchell’s, as well as Lybster, 
on the Caithness coast, where, in order to avoid as much as possible 
conflict with the open sea, he preferred to recess the basin land- 
wards of high water, instead of carrying the works outwards. He 
also designed improvements at Wick on the same principle. Mr 
Mitchell is well known as having been the engineer of the extensive 
work known as the Highland Bailway between Perth and Inver- 
ness, as well as of most of the railways to the northward of Inver- 
ness. Mr Mitchell, in conjunction with Messrs William and 
Murdoch Paterson, was engineer for the Skye line. 
Mr Mitchell has left behind him so many works of a varied, and 
some of them of a difficult nature, as to prove his natural sagacity 
and skill. He was always highly esteemed by his professional 
brethren for his geniality and high professional honour as well as 
his ability. True and genial as a friend, his death was felt by 
many as a personal loss, both in Scotland and in London, where he 
principally lived in later years. He died in London on 26th 
November 1883, at the advanced age of eighty years. 
