Part 2 (2/2)
_Q_ ”Were you exposed to any inconvenience in taking your surveys in consequence of these interruptions?”
_A_ ”We were”
_Q_ ”On whose property?”
_A_ ”On my Lord Sefton's, Lord Derby's, and particularly Mr Bradshaw's part”
_Q_ ”I believe you ca of some of the canals?”
_A_ ”I believe I was threatened to be ducked in the pond if I proceeded; and, of course we had a great deal of the survey to make by stealth, at the tiht, and guns were discharged over the grounds belonging to Captain Bradshaw, to prevent us; I can state further, I ice turned off the ground myself (Mr Bradshaw's) by his o instantly they would take me up, and carry me off to Worsley”
Committee _Q_ ”Had you ever asked leave?”
_A_ ”I did, of all the gentlemen to whom I have alluded; at least, if I did not ask leave of all myself, I did of my Lord Derby, but I did not of Lord Sefton, but the Committee had-at least I was so informed; and I last year asked leave of Mr Bradshaw's tenants to pass there, and they denied e had been done, and I said if they would tell me what it was, I would pay theh I do not believe it a”
_Q_ ”Do you suppose it is a likely thing to obtain leave froentleone upon his land to take levels without his leave, and he hiardens of his tenants, and tra for the Liverpool market?”
_A_ ”I have found it soh places of that kind”
In soe bodies of navvies were collected for the defence of the surveyors; and being liberally provided with liquor, and paid well for the task, they intied to be satisfied arrants of coes of assault The navvies were the s, because the project, if carried out, afforded them the prospect of increased labour
LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY
Mr C F Adams, jun, remarks:-”It was this elenition of success, which gave a peculiar interest to everything connected with the Manchester and Liverpool railroad The whole world was looking at it, with a full realizing sense that so Every day people watched the gradual develop so they had sensations and those sensations they have described There is consequently an ele it To their descriptions time has only lent a new freshness They are full of honest wonder They arenow than they were fifty years ago, and for that reason are orth exhu
”To introduce the contemporaneous story of the day, however, it is not necessary even to briefly review the long series of events which had slowly led up to it The world is tolerably fae Stephenson, and with the vexatious obstacles he had to overcome before he could even secure a trial for his invention The ood dealwholi upon, and is the best possible preface to any account of his great day of life triuiven to us at the moment when at last all difficulties had been overcome-when the Manchester and Liverpool railroad was completed; and, literally, not only the eyes of Great Britain but those of all civilized countries were directed to it and to hiinated it At just that time it chanced that the celebrated actor, John Kehter, since known as Mrs Frances Kees the Kehter opportunities such as seldo they were, in fact, the lions of the stage, just as George Stephenson was the lion of the new railroad As wasactress has since published her iineer Her account of a ride side by side with George Stephenson, on the seat of his locomotive, over the as yet unopened road, is one of theand life-like records we have of theThe introduction is Mrs Kemble's own, and written forty-six years after the experience:-
”While ere acting at Liverpool, an experimental trip was proposed upon the line of railhich was being constructed between Liverpool and Manchester, the firstiron net which now covers the whole surface of England, and all civilized portions of the earth
The Liverpool hted self-interest proe Stephenson's nificent experiment, which the committee of inquiry of the House of Commons had rejected for the Government These men, of less intellectual culture than the Parliareat speculators, which is the poetry of the counting house and wharf, and were better able to receive the enthusiastic infection of the great projector's sanguine hope than the Westminster committee They were exultant and triuh, of course, not without sos as to the eventual success of the stupendous enterprise My father knew several of the gentle, and Stephenson having proposed a trial trip as far as the fifteen-mile viaduct, they, with infinite kindness, invited hi me, moreover, the place which I felt to be one of supreme honour, by the side of Stephenson All that wonderful history, as er than fiction, which Mr Siven in so attractive a form to the world, I then heard from his own lips He was rather a stern-featured man, with a dark and deeply ly inflected with his native Northumbrian accent, but the fascination of that story told by hi his iron pathith us, passed the first reading of the Arabian Nights, the incidents of which it al and kind, in answering all the questions of norance, and I listened to him with eyes brimful of warm tears of sympathy and enthusiasm, as he told me of all his alternations of hope and fear, of his many trials and disappointments, related with fine scorn, how the ”Parliaered and baffled hie, and hohen at last they had senius in the quaking depths of Chat Moss, he had exclaimed, 'Did ye ever see a boat float on water? I will make my road float upon Chat Moss!' The well-read Parliament men (some of whom, perhaps, wished for no railways near their parks and pleasure-grounds) could not believe the miracle, but the shrewd Liverpool reat vision of iain, did; and so the railroad was made, and I took this memorable ride by the side of its ed the honour and pleasure of it for one of the shares in the speculation”
”LIVERPOOL, August 26th, 1830
”MY DEAR H-: A coh for love, but a foolscap extra can only contain a railroad and my ecstasies There was once a er; this man had an i his watch to pieces and putting it together again; ina pair of shoes when he happened to be soap in ineer before a Committee of the House of Co a railroad from Liverpool to Manchester It so happened that to the quickest and most powerful perceptions and conceptions, to the able industry and perseverance, and the e of the phenomena of nature as they affect his peculiar labours, this ab;' he could no more explain to others what he meant to do and how he meant to do it, than he could fly, and therefore the'There is a rock to be excavated to a depth of more than sixty feet, there are eht, there is a swath to be traversed, in which if you drop an iron rod it sinks and disappears; hoill you do all this?' and receiving no answer but a broad Northumbrian, 'I can't tell you how I'll do it, but I can tell you I _will_ do it,' dis prevailed upon a coentlereat undertaking, in Deceround And noill give you an account of my yesterday's excursion A party of sixteen persons was ushered into a large court-yard, where, under cover, stood several carriages of a peculiar construction, one of which was prepared for our reception It was a long-bodied vehicle with seats placed across it back to back; the one ere in had six of these benches, and was a sort of uncovered _char a banc_ The wheels were placed upon two iron bands, which for so constructed as to slide along without any danger of hitching or beco on a concave groove
The carriage was set inreceived this impetus, rolled with us down an inclined plane into a tunnel, which forms the entrance to the railroad This tunnel is four hundred yards long (I believe), and will be lighted by gas At the end of it we e level, we stopped There is another tunnel parallel with this, only er, for it extends froes start, and which is quite out of Liverpool, the whole way under the town, to the docks This tunnel is for wagons and other heavy carriages; and as the engines which are to draw the trains along the railroad do not enter these tunnels, there is a large building at this entrance which is to be inhabited by steaines of a stationary turn ofones, which are to propel the trains through the tunnels to the ter out of their houses theth of the tunnel parallel to the one we passed through is (I believe) two thousand two hundred yards I wonder if you are understanding one word I aine which was to drag us along the rails