e and expose it to the
action of a hollow pit-coal fire, heated by the blast of bellows, until
it is reduced to a loop, which I draw out under a common forge hammer
into bar-iron." This method of manufacture was followed with success,
though for some time, as indeed to this day, the principal production
of the Carron Works was castings, for which the peculiar quality of the
Scotch iron admirably adapts it. The well-known Carronades,[2] or
"Smashers," as they were named, were cast in large numbers at the
Carron Works. To increase the power of his blowing apparatus, Dr.
Roebuck called to his aid the celebrated Mr. Smeaton, the engineer, who
contrived and erected for him at Carron the most perfect apparatus of
the kind then in existence. It may also be added, that out of the
Carron enterprise, in a great measure, sprang the Forth and Clyde
Canal, the first artificial navigation in Scotland. The Carron
Company, with a view to securing an improved communication with
Glasgow, themselves surveyed a line, which was only given up in
consequence of the determined opposition of the landowners; but the
project was again revived through their means, and was eventually
carried out after the designs of Smeaton and Brindley.

While the Carron foundry was pursuing a career of safe prosperity, Dr.
Roebuck's enterprise led him to embark in coal-mining, with the object
of securing an improved supply of fuel for the iron works. He became
the lessee of the Duke of Hamilton's extensive coal-mines at
Boroughstoness, as well as of the salt-pans which were connected with
them. The mansion of Kinneil went with the lease, and there Dr.
Roebuck and his family took up their abode. Kinneil House was formerly
a country seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, and is to this day a stately
old mansion, reminding one of a French chateau. Its situation is of
remarkable beauty, its windows overlooking the broad expanse of the
Firth of Forth, and commanding an extensive view of the country along
its northern shores. The place has become in a measure classical,
Kinneil House having been inhabited, since Dr. Roebuck's time, by
Dugald Stewart, who there wrote his Philosophical Essays.[3] When Dr.
Roebuck began to sink for coal at the new mines, he found it necessary
to erect pumping-machinery of the most powerful kind that could be
contrived, in order to keep the mines clear of water. For this purpose
the Newcomen engine, in its then state, was found insuffi