7‘24 
THE GREAT CANAL OF SCOTLAND. 
transports, and small ships of war ; the expense of which was to have 
been five hundred thousand pounds, a sum far beyond the abilities 
of his reign. It was again projected in 1722, and a survey made : 
but nothing more was done till 1761, when the then Lord Napier, at 
his own expense, caused to be made a survey, plan, and estimate, on 
a small scale. In 1764, the trustees for fisheries &c. in Scotland, 
caused to be made another survey, plan, and estimate, of a canal live 
feet deep, which was to cost seventy-nine thousand pounds. In 1766, 
a subscription was obtained by a number of the most respectable 
merchants in Glasgow, to form a canal four feet deep, and twenty- 
four feet in breadth ; but when the bill was nearly obtained in par- 
liament, it was given up, on account of the smallness of the scale, and 
a new subscription set on foot for a canal seven feet deep, estimated 
at one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. This obtained the sanc- 
tion of parliament, and the work was begun in 1768 by Mr. Smeaton 
the engineer. 
The extreme length of the canal from the Forth to the Clyde is 
thirty-five miles, beginning at the mouth of the Carron, and ending at 
Dalmure Burnfoot on the Clyde, six miles below Glasgow, rising and 
falling one hundred and sixty feet by means of thirty-nine locks, twenty 
on the east side of the summit, and nineteen on the west, as the tide 
does not ebb so low' in the Clyde as in the Forth, by nine feet. Vessels 
drawing eight feet water, and not exceeding nineteen feet beam, and 
seventy-three feet in length, pass with ease, the canal having been 
afterwards deepened to more than eight feet. The carrying the canal 
through moss, quicksand, gravel, and rocks, up precipices, and 
over valleys, was attended with inconceivable difficulties. There are 
eighteen drawbridges, and fifteen aqueduct bridges of note, besides 
small ones and tunnels. In the first three miles there are only six locks : 
but in the fourth mile there are no less than ten locks, and a very 
fine aqueduct bridge over the great road west of Falkirk. In the 
next six miles there are only four locks, which carry on to the sum- 
mit. The canal then runs eighteen miles on a level, and terminates 
abojit a mile from Glasgow. In this course, for a considerable way 
the ground is banked about twenty-five feet high, and the water is 
sixteen feet deep, and two miles of it are made through a deep moss. 
At Kirkinhillock the canal is carried over the water of Logie, on an 
aqueduct arch of ninety feet broad. This arch was ihrowm over in 
three stretches, having only a centre of thirty feet, which was shifted 
small rollers from one stretch to another : a thing new, and never 
attempted before with an arch of this size, yet the joinings are as 
fairly equal as any other part, and admired as a very fine piece of 
masonry. On each side there is a very considerable banking over 
the valley. The work was carried on till within six miles of its junc- 
tion with the Clyde ; when the subscription and a subsequent loan 
being exhausted, it was stopped in 1775. The city ofGlasgovy, how- 
ever, by means of a collateral branch, opened a cH)mmiinication with 
the Forth, which has produced a revenue of about six thousand pounds 
annually ; and, in order to finish the remaining six miles, government, 
in 1784, gave fifty thousand pounds out of the forfeited estates, the divi- 
dends arising from this sum to be applied to makingand repairing roads 
