Читать книгу Scottish Reminiscences онлайн

11 страница из 80

Much more leisurely was the transit on the Union Canal. The boats were comfortably fitted up and were drawn by a cavalcade of horses, urged forward by postboys. It was a novel and delightful sensation, which I can still recall, to see fields, trees, cottages, and hamlets flit past, as if they formed a vast moving panorama, while one seemed to be sitting absolutely still. For mere luxury of transportation, such canal-travel stands quite unrivalled. Among its drawbacks, however, are the long detentions at the locks. But as everything was new to me in my first expedition to the west, I remember enjoying these locks with the keenest pleasure, sometimes remaining in the boat, and feeling it slowly floated up or let down, sometimes walking along the margin and watching the rush of the water through the gradually opening sluices.

LOCH KATRINE IN 1843

Both the stage-coaches and the passenger boats on the canal were disused after the opening of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in the spring of 1842. A few weeks subsequent to the running of the first trains, the Glasgow Courier announced that ‘the whole of the stage-coaches from Glasgow and Edinburgh are now off the road, with the exception of the six o’clock morning coach, which is kept running in consequence of its carrying the mail bags.’