Loch-Tumel is narrow, confined by the sloping sides of steep hills, and has on its western limits a flat, rich, woody country. The Loch of Spinic is almost on a flat, and its sides much indented. Loch-Moy is small, and has soft features on its banks amidst rude environs. Loch-Ness is strait and narrow; its shores abound with a wild magnificence, lofty, precipitous, and wooded, and has all the greatness of an Alpine lake. Loch-Oich has lofty mountains at a small distance from its borders; the shores indented, and the water decorated with isles. Loch-Lochy, is without isles; its shores slope, and several straiths terminate its banks. Loch-Au is long and waving; its little isles tufted with trees, and just appearing above the water: its two great feeds of water at each extremity, and its singular lateral discharge near one of them, sufficiently mark this great lake. Loch-Lomond is the most beautiful of the Caledonian lakes. The first view of it from Tarbat, presents an extensive serpentine, winding amidst lofty hills: on the north barren, black, and rocky, which darken with their shade that contracted part of the water. Near this gloomy tract, beneath Craig Roston, was the principal seat of the M'Gregors, a murderous clan, infamons for excesses of all kind; who at length, for a horrible massacre of the Colquhuns, or Cahouns, in the year 1602, were proscribed, and hunted down like wild beasts; their very name suppressed by act of council; so that the remnant, now dispersed, dare not even sign it to any deed. Their posterity are still said to be distinguished among the clans in which they have incorporated themselves, not only by the redness of their hair, but by their still retaining the mischievous disposition of their ancestors. On the west side of this lake the mountains are cloathed cloathed, near the bottoms, with woods of oak, quite to the water's edge; their summits lofty, naked, and craggy. On the east side, the mountains are equally high, but the tops form a more even ridge, parallel to the lake, except where Ben Lomond overtops the rest. The upper parts are black and barren; but the lower parts have great marks of fertility, the yellow corn finely contrasting with the verdure of the groves intermixed with it. CANALS. Scotland is almost divided into two parts, by the rivers Forth and Clyde. The Forth falls into the sea below Edinburgh, and has a communication with the whole eastern coast of Great Britain; with France, Ostend, Holland, Hamburgh, Prussia, Denmark, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and Greenland, The Clyde falls into the Atlantic Ocean below Glasgow, and communicates with the western coast of Great Britain, with Ireland, the south of France, Portugal, Spain, the Mediterranean, America, and the West Indies. These two rivers thus falling, in opposite directions, into the two seas which environ our island, and the neck of land between them, being scarcely twentyfour miles in breadth, suggested the idea of a junction between them, to open a cominunication across the kingdom, and thereby render unnecessary the long and dangerous navigation, by the Land's-end, and the Pentland-frith. An object of such general utility did not escape the attention of Charles II. who amidst all his gallantries, was the great promoter of every design which tended to encourage trade and navigation. That monarch proposed to open a passage for transports, and small ships of war, at the expence of 500,000l. but the sum was much too great to be raised in his reign, and the design, was consequently laid aside. The affairs of the continent engaged the attention of succeeding princes, till till the beginning of the present reign, when the Earl of Chatham, endued with all the penetration and magnanimity of an able statesman, proposed to carry the design immediately into execution, at the public expence, on a smaller scale than the original plan, but still sufficient to admit vessels of considerable burthen. Unfortunately, the resignation of that great man, among other causes, prevented the execution of a project so beneficial to the security and expedition of the British navigation in the northern seas. This scheme, thus abandoned a second time by the state, was now taken up by individuals, some of whom were suspected of private views, inimical to the general welfare of the community; so that this great work may from that time be considered as sacrificed to the hopes of gain and influence, both with respect to the course of the canal and to its dimensions. Nature had pointed out Borrowstounness, on the Forth, and Dalmuir-burn-foot, six miles below Glasgow, on the Clyde, as the two extremities of this inland navigation; but such was the force of influence, that instead of opening the east end of the canal at Borrowstounness, where there is water at neap tides for ships of two or three hundred tons burthen, and safe lying, it was begun upon the river Carron, at the distance of a mile from its junction with the Forth, and four miles above Borrowstounness, where vessels of burthen could not float at neap tides, besides the delay, and inconveniences in navigating the Forth, and the mouth of the Carron, from floods and contrary winds, also a circuitous navigation of at least two miles. The depth of water, and dimensions of the canal, came next under consideration, and gave rise to much controversy between the inhabitants of the east country, on one part, and a considerable number of the inhabitants of Glasgow on the other. When we consider that the space to be cut did not, with all its windings, exceed thirty, or thirty-two miles, and that this short short navigation, would at once open a communication between the two seas, and all the countries lying upon those seas, common sense pointed out the propriety of the greatest depth of water that the nature of the country would admit. This was the desire of the nation in general; and it would have been the interest of Ireland, and of London, Bristol, Liverpool, and other towns of England, to have subscribed towards a design, in which their commerce, especially in time of war, was materially interested. These considerations, however, were disregarded by the merchants; and those of the Scottish nation, who were friends to a deep canal, seeing themselves overpowered by their opponents, submitted reluctantly to an imperfect navigation. Mr. Smeaton, an able engineer from Yorkshire, had estimated the expence of four, seven, and fourteen feet water; certain merchants of Glasgow adopted the scale of four feet, which, though sufficient for the trade of that city, would scarcely have answered any valuable purpose to the nation in general; and it was suggested, no doubt invidiously, that those persons never meant that the canal should join the Clyde. While a bill for cutting the proposed ditch, of four feet water, was before parliament, and on the point of being passed, the east country gentlemen and traders took the alarm, objected to the frivolousness and partial utility of the plan, and, fortunately for the public, obtained a bill extending the depth of water to seven feet. It now became necessary to open a subscription, to the amount of 150,000l. which was soon filled about 130,000l. was actually paid; and 50,000l. was afterwards added by government. Mr. Smeaton began this arduous task in the year 1768, and overcame almost insurmountable difficulties in the execution of it. The dimensions of this canal, though greatly contracted from the original design, are much superior to any work of the same nature in South-Britain. The English canals are gene E rally rally from three to five feet deep, and from twenty to forty feet wide, and the lock-gates from ten to twelve feet; but they answer the purpose of inland carriage, from one town to another, for which alone they were designed. The depth of the canal between the Forth and the Clyde is seven feet; its breadth at the surface sixty feet: the locks are seventy-five feet long, and their gates twenty feet wide. It is raised from the Carron by twenty locks, in a track of ten miles, to the amazing height of 155 feet above the medium full seamark. At the twentieth lock begins the canal of partition, on the summit between the east and west seas; which canal of partition continues eighteen miles on a level, terminating at Hamilton-hill, a mile north-west of the Clyde, at Glasgow. In some places the canal is carried through mossy ground, and in others through solid rock. In the fourth mile of the canal there are ten locks, and a fine aqueduct bridge, which crosses the great road leading from Edinburgh to Glasgow: the expence of this mile amounted to eighteen thousand pounds. At Kirkintullock the canal is carried over the water of Logie, on an aqueduct bridge, the arch of which is ninety feet broad, and was built in three different operations of thirty feet each, having only one centre of thirty feet broad, which was shifted on small rollers from one stretch to another. Though this was a new thing, and never attempted before with an arch of this size, yet the joinings are as fairly equal as any other part of the arch; the whole is thought to be a capital piece of masonry. There are in the whole eighteen draw-bridges, and fifteen aqueduct bridges, of considerable size, besides small ones and tunnels. There is one reservoir of fifty acres, twenty-four feet deep; and another of seventy acres, twenty-two feet deep, in which many springs and rivers terminate, sufficient to give a supply of water at all times. This great work was completed, by contract, in the year 1789; and cost about 200,0001. The ceremony of opening this canal in form was in July, 1790, Upon |