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one but Stephenson would have been bold enough to attempt such an apparent absurdity.

“However wild, however, his plans might seem, they always stood on a firm basis of common sense.

He

had calculated that as a ship floats in water, so could a railroad be supported on a bog, if only he could get his rails to float. The point was, how to manage this; and he thought he had hit on the way: he cut drains, till he had drained away the water to a certain extent, and then contrived to make hurdles float upon the surface of the bog; ballast being placed upon them, and cross sleepers to support the rails. It sounds simple enough as I tell you now, but the difficulties were in reality greater than I can explain to you. It requires a practical engineer to understand the full merits of the work, or the anxiety which it cost Mr. Stephenson; sometimes the drains would give way, and his operations be all flooded. Sometimes the weight of the line would squeeze down the bog, and then it would not float; sometimes it seemed impossible that the world itself could contain rubbish enough to pour into the insatiable swamp, to make a firm and floating way. The directors were in despair.

"What are we to do?' they exclaimed, as day followed day, and still there was no apparent progress made in the work.

192

CHAT MOSS IS CONQUERED.

"Persevere,' replied Stephenson.

"And however often the question was asked him, still he met it with the same unalterable reply. Great was the joy of his opponents when they thought that at last they had their adversary in an inextricable fix. The most absurd rumours were every where rife; now it was said, 'Chat Moss had blown up;' now, 'That hundreds of men and workmen were engulphed and lost in the bog;' now, better still, 'That Stephenson himself had been swallowed up; and there was an end of his speculations for ever.' The wish was father to the thought. Whilst this gratifying piece of intelligence was circulating, Stephenson was putting the finishing touches to his great undertaking; and in six months from the time when a meeting of the directors had pronounced, 'The works must be abandoned, the thing could never be done,' the rails were all in their places, and those very directors speeding away comfortably in a railway carriage over that very bog which would have been considered for ever impassable, but for Stephenson's firm determination to keep to his motto, and to 'persevere.'

"Chat Moss once crossed, every thing else seemed easy by comparison. The faith of the directors was strengthened, and even those most opposed to Ste

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phenson thought twice before they openly criticized the proceedings of a man who had thrown a railway over an unapproachable swamp. People looked on and wondered what would come next, when neither the opposition of men, nor the apparently insurmountable obstacles of nature, had the slightest effect in turning the indefatigable engineer from his purpose. His greatest difficulty now, was to organize a body of workmen who could understand and execute his orders."

66

Why, aunt," exclaimed Charles, "why did he not employ the navvies ?"

"Because there were no navvies then, at least, not in the sense in which we now use the term, when we apply it to the men who are employed almost exclusively in the construction of railways; and a vigorous, energetic body of workers they are, with their own laws and regulations, and code of morality; but when Stephenson wanted help, he had to look out for it for himself; and with his usual judgment, he applied to a very strong, powerful class of men, who earned their livelihood by making canals and works of that description. These men were called navigators, a word afterwards corrupted into the shorter term, navvy, and were peculiarly well fitted by their previous habits of life for being formed into just such a band of workmen as

194

MR. ROBERT STEPHENSON

Stephenson required. However, although he had thus found the materials, he had to mould them himself into shape, and very hard work this was. He knew that precept without practice is of no worth whatever, and that if he wished them to become skilled artisans, he must see that they were well taught their trade; consequently he himself took part in their work, sometimes wheeling the barrows, sometimes using the pickaxe, or whatever might be the business in hand; explaining at all times the principles on which he acted to the men, and showing them how the greatest amount of labour might be effected with the smallest possible expenditure of time and strength. Nothing was too small for him to think it worth his closest attention; nothing was beyond the grasp of his mind. The consequence was, that he gradually trained a body of men, who have since become the wonder of the whole world, for their skill, their strength, and their indomitable energy.

"But extraordinary as were Stephenson's powers, there is a limit to all things human; he could not be every where at once, and he soon became painfully aware that if his time and attention were to be absorbed with his engineering work, his locomotive, the cherished favourite, on which his hopes of future fame depended,

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