o appoint Mr. Stephenson their
principal engineer at a salary of 1000 pounds per annum.

He at once removed his residence to Liverpool, and made arrangements to
commence the works. He began with the "impossible thing"--to do that
which the most distinguished engineers of the day had declared that "no
man in his senses would undertake to do"--namely, to make the road over
Chat Moss! It was indeed a most formidable undertaking; and the project
of carrying a railway along, under, or over such a material as that of
which it consisted, would certainly never have occurred to an ordinary
mind. Michael Drayton supposed the Moss to have had its origin at the
Deluge. Nothing more impassable could have been imagined than that
dreary waste; and Mr. Giles only spoke the popular feeling of the day
when he declared that no carriage could stand on it "short of the
bottom." In this bog, singular to say, Mr. Roscoe, the accomplished
historian of the Medicis, buried his fortune in the hopeless attempt to
cultivate a portion of it which he had bought.

Chat Moss is an immense peat bog of about twelve square miles in extent.
Unlike the bogs or swamps of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, which consist
principally of soft mud or silt, this bog is a vast mass of spongy
vegetable pulp, the result of the growth and decay of ages. The spagni,
or bog-mosses, cover the entire area; one year's growth rising over
another,--the older growths not entirely decaying, but remaining
partially preserved by the antiseptic properties peculiar to peat. Hence
the remarkable fact that, although a semifluid mass, the surface of Chat
Moss rises above the level of the surrounding country. Like a turtle's
back, it declines from the summit in every direction, having from thirty
to forty feet gradual slope to the solid land on all sides. From the
remains of trees, chiefly alder and birch, which have been dug out of it,
and which must have previously flourished upon the surface of soil now
deeply submerged, it is probable that the sand and clay base on which the
bog rests is saucer-shaped, and so retains the entire mass in position.
In rainy weather, such is its capacity for water that it sensibly swells,
and rises in those parts where the moss is the deepest. This occurs
through the capillary attraction of the fibres of the submerged moss,
which is from 20 to 30 feet in depth, whilst the growing plants
effectually check evaporation from the surface. This peculiar