The extreme height is sixteen hundred feet; and it is accomplished by five different stationary engines, each placed on a separate inclined plane, the highest of which is two thousand six hundred feet above the level of the sea.

The want of proper arrangement and sufficient hands made this a most dilatory and tedious operation.

Upon asking why so 'cute and go-ahead a people had tolerated such bad engineering originally, and such dilatory arrangements up to the present hour, I was answered, "Oh, sir, that's easily explained; it is a government road and a monopoly, but another road is nearly completed, by which all this will be avoided; and, as it is in the hands of a company, there will be no delay then."-- How curious it is, the way governments mess such things when they undertake them! I could not help thinking of the difference between our own government mails from Marseilles to Malta, &c., and the glorious steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, that carry on the same mails from Malta .-- But to return from my digression.
I was astonished to see a thing like a piece of a canal-boat descending one of these inclined planes on a truck; nor was my astonishment diminished when I found that it really was part of a canal-boat, and that the remaining portions were following in the rear.

The boats are made, some in three, some in five compartments; and, being merely forelocked together, are easily carried across the hill, from the canal on one side to the continuation thereof on the other.[L] A few hours after quitting these planes, we came to the end of the railway, and had to coach it over a ten-mile break in the line.

It was one of those wretched wet days which is said to make even an old inhabitant of Argyleshire look despondingly,--in which county, it will be remembered that, after six weeks' incessant wet, an English traveller, on asking a shepherd boy whether it always rained there, received the consoling reply of, "No, sir--it sometimes snaws." The ground was from eight to eighteen inches deep in filthy mud; the old nine-inside stages--of which more anon--were waiting ready; and as there were several ladies in the cars, I thought the stages might be induced to draw up close to the scantily-covered platform to take up the passengers; but no such idea entered their heads.