was smooth and easy to run upon, just
as Dr. Arnott's water-bed is soft and easy to lie upon--the pressure
being equal at all points. There was, and still is, a sort of
springiness in the road over the Moss, such as is felt in passing along a
suspended bridge; and those who looked along the line as a train passed
over it, said they could observe a waviness, such as precedes and follows
a skater upon ice.

During the progress of these works the most ridiculous rumours were set
afloat. The drivers of the stage-coaches who feared for their calling,
brought the alarming intelligence into Manchester from time to time, that
"Chat Moss was blown up!" "Hundreds of men and horses had sunk; and the
works were completely abandoned!" The engineer himself was declared to
have been swallowed up in the Serbonian bog; and "railways were at an end
for ever!"

In the construction of the railway, Mr. Stephenson's capacity for
organising and directing the labours of a large number of workmen of all
kinds eminently displayed itself. A vast quantity of ballast-waggons had
to be constructed, and implements and materials collected, before the
army of necessary labourers could be efficiently employed at the various
points of the line. There were not at that time, as there are now, large
contractors possessed of railway plant, capable of executing earth-works
on a large scale. The first railway engineer had not only to contrive
the plant, but to organise and direct the labour. The labourers
themselves had to be trained to their work; and it was on the Liverpool
and Manchester line that Mr. Stephenson organised the staff of that
mighty band of railway navvies, whose handiworks will be the wonder and
admiration of succeeding generations. Looking at their gigantic traces,
the men of some future age may be found to declare of the engineer and of
his workmen, that "there were giants in those days."

Although the works of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway are of a much
less formidable character than those of many lines that have since been
constructed, they were then regarded as of the most stupendous
description. In deed, the like of them had not before been executed in
England. It had been our engineer's original intention carry the railway
from the north end of Liverpool, round the red-sandstone ridge on which
the upper part of the town is built, and also round the higher rise of
the coal formation at Rainhill, by following the nat