been cut asunder to allow our passage thus far below the surface of
the earth, I felt as if no fairy tale was ever half so wonderful as what
I saw. Bridges were thrown from side to side across the top of these
cliffs, and the people looking down upon us from them seemed like pigmies
standing in the sky. I must be more concise, though, or I shall want
room. We were to go only fifteen miles, that distance being sufficient
to show the speed of the engine, and to take us to the most beautiful and
wonderful object on the road. After proceeding through this rocky
defile, we presently found ourselves raised upon embankments ten or
twelve feet high; we then came to a moss or swamp, of considerable
extent, on which no human foot could tread without sinking, and yet it
bore the road which bore us. This had been the great stumbling-block in
the minds of the committee of the House of Commons; but Mr. Stephenson
has succeeded in overcoming it. A foundation of hurdles, or, as he
called it, basket-work, was thrown over the morass, and the interstices
were filled with moss and other elastic matter.

"Upon this the clay and soil were laid down, and the road does float, for
we passed over it at the rate of five and twenty miles an hour, and saw
the stagnant swamp water trembling on the surface of the soil on either
side of us. I hope you understand me. The embankment had gradually been
rising higher and higher, and in one place where the soil was not settled
enough to form banks, Stephenson had constructed artificial ones of
woodwork, over which the mounds of earth were heaped, for he said that
though the woodwork would rot, before it did so the banks of earth which
covered it would have been sufficiently consolidated to support the road.
We had now come fifteen miles, and stopped where the road traversed a
wide and deep valley. Stephenson made me alight and led me down to the
bottom of this ravine, over which, in order to keep his road level, he
has thrown a magnificent viaduct of nine arches, the middle one of which
is seventy feet high, through which we saw the whole of this beautiful
little valley. It was lovely and wonderful beyond all words. He here
told me many curious things respecting this ravine; how he believed the
Mersey had once rolled through it; how the soil had proved so unfavorable
for the foundation of his bridge that it was built upon piles, which had
been driven into the earth to an enormous depth; how while