CHAPTER VIII.

HIGHLAND ROADS AND BRIDGES.

IN our introduction to the Life of Rennie, we gave a rapid survey of the state of Scotland about the middle of last century. We found a country without roads, fields lying uncultivated, mines unexplored, and all branches of industry languishing, in the midst of an idle, miserable, and haggard population. Fifty years passed, and the state of the Lowlands had become completely changed. Roads had been made, canals dug, coal-mines opened up, iron works established; manufactures were extending in all directions; and Scotch agriculture, instead of being the worst, was admitted to be the best in the island.

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"I have been perfectly astonished," wrote Romilly from Stirling, in 1793, "at the richness and high cultivation of all the tract of this calumniated country through which I have passed, and which extends quite from Edinburgh to the mountains where I now am. It is true, however, that almost everything which one sees to admire in the way of cultivation is due to modern improvements; and now and then one observes a few acres of brown moss, contrasting admirably with the corn-fields to which they are contiguous, and affording a specimen of the dreariness and desolation which, only half a century ago, overspread a country now highly cultivated and become a most copious source of human happiness."

1

It must, however, be admitted, that the industrial progress to which we have above referred was confined

1 Romilly's Autobiography."

mainly to the Lowlands, and had scarcely penetrated the mountainous regions lying towards the north-west. The rugged nature of that part of the country interposed a formidable barrier to improvement, and the district had thus remained very imperfectly opened up. The only practicable roads were those which had been made by the soldiery after the rebellions of 1715 and '45, through counties which before had been inaccessible except by dangerous footpaths across high and rugged mountains. One was formed along the Great Glen of Scotland, in the line of the present Caledonian Canal, connected with the Lowlands by the road through Glencoe by Tyndrum down the western banks of Loch Lomond; another, more northerly, connected Fort Augustus with Dunkeld by Blair Athol; whilst a third, still further to the north and east, connected Fort George with Cuparin-Angus by Badenoch and Braemar. These roads were about eight hundred miles in extent, and maintained at the public expense. But they were laid out for purposes of military occupation rather than for the convenience of the districts which they traversed. Hence they were comparatively little used, and the Highlanders, in passing from one place to another, for the most part continued to travel by the old cattle tracks along the mountain sides. But the population were so poor and so spiritless, and industry was as yet in so backward a state all over the Highlands, that the want of communication was little felt. The state of agricul ture may be inferred from the fact that an instrument called the cas-chrom '-literally, the "crooked-foot ".

the use of which had been forgotten for hundreds of years in every other country in Europe, was almost the only tool employed in tillage in those parts of the Highlands which were separated by impassable roads from the rest of the United Kingdom. The country lying on the west of the Great Glen was absolutely without a road. The native population were by necessity peaceful. Old feuds were restrained by the strong arm of the law, if indeed the spirit of the clans had not been completely broken by the upshot of the rebellion of Forty-five. But the people had not yet learnt to bend their backs, like the Sassenach, to the stubborn soil, and they sat gloomily by their turf-fires at home, or wandered away to settle in other lands beyond the seas. It even began to be feared that the country would become entirely depopulated; and it became a matter of national concern to devise methods of opening up the district so as to develope its industry and afford improved means of sustenance for its population. The poverty of the inhabitants rendered the attempt to construct roads-even had they desired them-beyond their scanty means; but the ministry of the day entertained the opinion that by tributing a certain proportion of the necessary expense, the proprietors of Highland estates might be induced to advance the remainder; and on this principle the construction of the new roads in those districts was undertaken.

In 1802 Mr. Telford was called upon by the Government to make a survey of Scotland, and report as to the measures which were necessary for the improvement of the roads and bridges of that part of the kingdom, and also on the means of promoting the fisheries on the east and west coasts, with the object of better opening up the country and preventing further extensive emigration. Previous to this time he had been employed by the British Fisheries Society-of which his friend Sir William Pulteney was Governor-to inspect the harbours at their several stations, and to devise a plan for the establishment of a fishery on the coast of Caith

He accordingly made an extensive tour of Scotland, examining, amongst other harbours, that of Annan; from which he proceeded northward by Aberdeen to Wick and Thurso, returning to Shrewsbury by Edinburgh and Dumfries.' He accumulated a large

mass of data for his report, which was sent in to the Fishery Society, with charts and plans, in the course of the following year.

In July, 1802, he was requested by the Lords of the Treasury, most probably in consequence of the preceding report, to make a further survey of the interior of the Highlands, the result of which he communicated in his report presented to Parliament in the following year. Although full of important local business, "kept running," as he says, "from town to country, and from country to town, never when awake, and perhaps not always when asleep, have my Scotch surveys been absent from my mind." He had worked very hard at

1 He was accompanied on this tour by Colonel Dixon, with whom he returned to his house at Mount Annan, in Dumfries. Telford says of him: "The Colonel seems to have roused the county of Dumfries from the lethargy in which it has slumbered for centuries. The map of the county,

the mineralogical survey, the new roads, the opening of lime works, the competition of ploughing, the improving harbours, the building of bridges, are works which bespeak the exertions of no common man."-Letter to Mr. Andrew Little, dated Shrewsbury, 30th November, 1801.

his report, and hoped that it might be productive of some good.

The report was duly presented, printed,' and approved, and it formed the starting-point of a system of legislation with reference to the Highlands which extended over many years, and had the effect of completely opening up that romantic but rugged district of country, and extending to its inhabitants the advantages of improved intercourse with the other parts of the kingdom. Mr. Telford pointed out that the military roads which had been made there were altogether insufficient, and that the use of them was in many places very much circumscribed by the want of bridges over some of the principal rivers. For instance, the route from Edinburgh to Inverness, by the Central Highlands, was seriously interrupted at Dunkeld, where the Tay is broad and deep, and not always easy to be crossed by means of a boat. The route to the same place by the east coast was in like manner broken at Fochabers, where the rapid Spey could only be crossed by a dangerous ferry.

The difficulties encountered by the Bar, in travelling the north circuit about this time, are well described by Lord Cockburn in his Memorials.' "Those who are born to modern travelling," he says, "can scarcely be made to understand how the previous age got on. The state of the roads may be judged of from two or three facts. There was no bridge over the Tay at Dunkeld, or over the Spey at Fochabers, or over the Findhorn at Forres. Nothing but wretched pierless ferries, let to poor cottars, who rowed, or hauled, or pushed a crazy boat across, or more commonly got their wives to do it. There was no mail-coach north of Aberdeen till, I think, after the battle of Waterloo. What it must have been

Ordered to be printed 5th of April, 1803.