o
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 have been benefited by
Telford's Scotch harbour works alone, it is impossible not to envy a
great engineer his almost unlimited power of pe