HERRING-FISHERY. 367 hares, foxes, goats, rabbits, otters, roes, &c. and return with hardware, haberdashery, and other articles of use or luxury, which are retailed by the tradesmen to the town and county. A shipload of juniper-berries used also, annually, some time back, to be sent to Holland from this place: the juniper grows in great profusion upon the neighbouring hills. The herring-fishery upon the coast is, of late, rather precarious. The Highlanders are very fond of this fish, and hail its first visit, as the Dutch do, with jubilee joy. I saw very fine wheat growing in the neighbourhood of the town, a very rare circumstance in the west part of the Highlands; and the wheaten bread is very good. The crops are here mostly more forward than on the western coast, owing to the climate and soil being much more favourable than in the western Highlands. Inverness is likely, in the course of a few years, greatly to augment her commercial character and consequence, from a work of Roman magnificence, which, when completed, will be a glorious monument of the enterprise and labour of modern times. The Caledonian Canal commences very near Inverness, which, when finished, will unite the German to the Atlantic Ocean. To many of my readers the details of this stupendous undertaking, so important to the nation at large, will not be very interesting; but I cannot help entering into them 368 CALEDONIAN CANAL. a little, for the sake of others, who may wish to know some of its particulars. The Act of Parliament for effecting this inland navigation from the eastern to the western sea was passed on the 22d of July, 1803. By a line of lochs and rivers Nature seemed to have invited the skill and enterprise of man to the undertaking, and, upon investigation, every part intended to be occupied by the canal was found, with little abatement, to be very favourable to the purpose. It has been considered as probable, that, in more early ages of the world, the immense chasm (almost two-thirds of the length of which is still occupied by water) has been nearly open from sea to sea; and that the land which now separates the lochs has been formed from the decay of the adjoining mountains, wasted by time, and brought down by torrents from rain. As the discussion of the Bill completely unfolded all its objects, they were sufficiently understood by the Commissioners, who held their first meeting on the 30th of the same month, and who set to work with a promptitude not in general very conspicuous in the discharge of public duty in England. This canal opens into Loch Beauly, part of the Murray Frith, and, near Clachnacary, ascends by a cluster of four locks. It was found necessary to alter the course of the Ness, by throwing up an embankment of about a thousand yards in length, and twelve feet in height, above the line of ordinary low water in the river. CALEDONIAN CANAL. 369 Near Inverness the soil is so loose, being composed of gravel and sand, that, in pits sunk for trial, the water rose and fell with the tide, and considerable apprehension was entertained that a proper foundation for the locks, and other necessary masonry, would not have been found; but, at length, one place was discovered of sufficient solidity to answer the purpose. The canal then proceeds through Loch Doughfour, a little loch, which, like some inconsiderable person in society, who is frequently very troublesome, presents the greatest difficulty to the navigation on account of its shallowness, and the quantities of gravel which are carried with great velocity into, and through, this tiny lake: the navigation then continues to Loch Ness, a distance of about seven miles, the advantageous length and form of which, no doubt, determined the undertaking. It is a noble piece of water, twenty-three miles and three quarters long, and in breadth varies from a mile and a quarter to three quarters of a mile, and is nearly straight from one end to the other. Its shores are bold and commanding, and on each side rise lofty, rocky, and rugged mountains, irregularly cut into deep gullies, with frightful precipices. The depth of its water, which has erroneously been said to be unfathomable, is from one hundred and six to one hundred and twenty-nine fathoms (a fathom is six feet) in the middle parts, to eighty-five, seventy-five, or less, near its end, to the east. The sides, except the bays, are very steep, the 370 CALEDONIAN CANAL. rise being a foot in height, to a foot and a half in breadth. This excessive steepness has suggested the propriety of laying down mooring-chains with buoys in the bays, for the use of merchant-vessels intending to anchor in the loch, instead of letting go their anchors in so great a depth of water, as otherwise they would be obliged to do. The convenience of such a project will be very manifest when it is considered that a merchant-ship carries no more hands than are barely sufficient to weigh the anchor, so that, all hands being employed upon that service, the ship is left to drift to leeward, from the time the anchor quits its hold of the ground, until it is brought up to the bows of the vessel : for this reason, in Loch Ness, where the water is so deep, and so little room for drifting, a ship riding upon the lee side, with a wind blowing at all across the loch, would drift upon the shore before she could get her anchor up and make sail. Besides these advantages from mooringchains with buoys, the expense that would be saved in anchors and cables would be considerable. It has been ascertained that the bottom of Loch Ness is soft mud, of a dark brownish colour when wet, apparently consisting of the lighter parts of the soil of the surrounding mountains, which innumerable torrents have for ages washed down their sides; and, independently of the mooring-chains, it will afford good anchoring-ground in all CALEDONIAN CANAL. 371 parts. From a journal of the winds and weather, kept from the 1st of May, 1806, to the 1st of May, 1807, the irregularity of the wind in this mountainous region is proved, and will be satisfactory to those who apprehended, as has been generally believed, that so great a valley, rectilinear throughout, would almost constantly draw the wind into a current, traversing it from end to end, a circumstance which would have been highly unfavourable to the navigation of the lakes. By this journal it appears that the wind is not only irregular, but that it is frequently different during the same day at Corpach, at Fort Augustus, and at Clach nacary. The people in these parts, accustomed only to see the agitation of boats and small vessels in stormy weather upon this lake, are generally of opinion that the squalls and unsteadiness of the winds, which occasionally prevail among the lofty mountains which border this and the other lakes, would be dangerous to the navigation of large vessels, than which nothing can be more erroneous. In proof of the error of the opinion, a small vessel, of fourteen tons burden, was launched on Loch Ness, for the purpose of carrying timber purchased in Glenmorrison and near Port Clare, and this small trader, although undecked, usually completes two voyages a week, including loading and discharging, without interruption; though, being built . |