Biographies of Working Men | Page 7

thinking of the hand that
planned them, were designed by his inventive brain. The exquisite
stone arch which links the two banks of the lesser Scotch Dee in its
gorge at Tongueland is one of the most picturesque; for Telford was a
bit of an artist at heart, and, unlike too many modern railway
constructors, he always endeavoured to make his bridges and aqueducts
beautify rather than spoil the scenery in whose midst they stood.
Especially was he called in to lay out the great system of roads by
which the Scotch Highlands, then so lately reclaimed from a state of
comparative barbarism, were laid open for the great development they
have since undergone. In the earlier part of the century, it is true, a few
central highways had been run through the very heart of that great solid
block of mountains; but these were purely military roads, to enable the
king's soldiers more easily to march against the revolted clans, and they
had hardly more connection with the life of the country than the bare
military posts, like Fort William and Fort Augustus, which guarded
their ends, had to do with the ordinary life of a commercial town.
Meanwhile, however, the Highlands had begun gradually to settle
down; and Telford's roads were intended for the far higher and better
purpose of opening out the interior of northern Scotland to the
humanizing influences of trade and industry.
Fully to describe the great work which the mature engineer constructed
in the Highland region, would take up more space than could be
allotted to such a subject anywhere save in a complete industrial history
of roads and travelling in modern Britain. It must suffice to say that
when Telford took the matter in hand, the vast block of country north
and west of the Great Glen of Caledonia (which divides the Highlands
in two between Inverness and Ben Nevis)--a block comprising the
counties of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Cromarty, and half
Inverness--had literally nothing within it worthy of being called a road.

Wheeled carts or carriages were almost unknown, and all burdens were
conveyed on pack- horses, or, worse still, on the broad backs of
Highland lassies. The people lived in small scattered villages, and
communications from one to another were well-nigh impossible.
Telford set to work to give the country, not a road or two, but a main
system of roads. First, he bridged the broad river Tay at Dunkeld, so as
to allow of a direct route straight into the very jaws of the Highlands.
Then, he also bridged over the Beauly at Inverness, so as to connect the
opposite sides of the Great Glen with one another. Next, he laid out a
number of trunk lines, running through the country on both banks, to
the very north of Caithness, and the very west of the Isle of Skye.
Whoever to this day travels on the main thoroughfares in the greater
Scottish Islands--in Arran, Islay, Jura, Mull; or in the wild peninsula of
Morvern, and the Land of Lorne; or through the rugged regions of
Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, where the railway has not yet
penetrated,--travels throughout on Telford's roads. The number of large
bridges and other great engineering masterpieces on this network of
roads is enormous; among the most famous and the most beautiful, are
the exquisite single arch which spans the Spey just beside the lofty
rearing rocks of Craig Ellachie, and the bridge across the Dee, beneath
the purple heather-clad braes of Ballater. Altogether, on Telford's
Highland roads alone, there are no fewer than twelve hundred bridges.
Nor were these the only important labours by which Telford ministered
to the comfort and well-being of his Scotch fellow-countrymen.
Scotland's debt to the Eskdale stonemason is indeed deep and lasting.
While on land, he improved her communications by his great lines of
roads, which did on a smaller scale for the Highland valleys what
railways have since done for the whole of the civilized world; he also
laboured to improve her means of transit at sea by constructing a series
of harbours along that bare and inhospitable eastern coast, once almost
a desert, but now teeming with great towns and prosperous industries.
It was Telford who formed the harbour of Wick, which has since grown
from a miserable fishing village into a large town, the capital of the
North Sea herring fisheries. It was he who enlarged the petty port of
Peterhead into the chief station of the flourishing whaling trade. It was
he who secured prosperity for Fraserburgh, and Banff, and many other
less important centres; while even Dundee and Aberdeen, the chief

commercial cities of the east coast, owe to him a large part of their
present extraordinary wealth and industry. When one thinks how large
a number of human beings