[CHAPTER VII.]
GRAPPLING WITH DIFFICULTIES—THE BOG—A PUZZLE—THE PRIZE OFFER.
The real work was now to be done. Hopes and fears had yet to be verified.
At the first meeting of the directors, a man to put the enterprise through was to be chosen. Who? The Rennies were anxious to get the appointment. They naturally expected it. They had made the survey, and their name had had weight in getting the Act of Parliament. But they could not superintend the details of the work. They had other enterprises on foot.
Stephenson, no doubt, was the man. The directors felt him to be so. No one could long be with him without feeling his power. Besides, what he had done had been ably done. At the risk of offending the Rennies and their friends, they chose him, and the result proved the wisdom of their choice.
On receiving the appointment, he immediately moved to Liverpool, and the work began in good earnest. It was a stupendous undertaking for those days. Chat Moss had to be filled in, sixty-three bridges built, excavations made, tunnels erected, and all the practical details carried out, with very little past experience to profit by. Neither was the kind of labour well understood, nor was there that division of labour between contractors and engineers which relieves one man of too heavy a responsibility. In fact, both tools and men had to be made, and Stephenson had to do it.
The great quagmire was first grappled with. "No man in his senses would undertake to make a road over Chat Moss," opposers said in parliament: "That was to undertake the impossible." Stephenson, however, meant to try. Formidable it certainly was. Cattle ploughing on farms bordering the bog, where it ran underneath the tilled land, had to wear flat-soled boots in order to keep their hoofs from sinking down into the soft soil.
The proposed route ran four miles across it, and the way had to be drained and filled in with sand and gravel. The drainage tasked their ingenuity to the utmost, and almost baffled the workmen. After that was in some degree accomplished, waggon after waggonful of earth was thrown on for weeks and weeks, and it only sank into the mire and disappeared—not an inch of solid footing seemed gained; and on they went, filling and filling, without apparently having made the least impression on the Moss: the greedy bog only cried out for more.
Stephenson's men began to have their doubts. The opposition might have judged more correctly, after all. They asked him what he thought. "Go ahead," was his answer. By and by the directors began to have their fears. It looked to them like a very unpromising job. So it was. After waiting and waiting in vain for signs of progress, they called a meeting on the edge of the Moss, to see if it were not best to give it up as a bad job. The bog, they were afraid, might swallow up all their funds, as it had everything else. Stephenson lost not a whit of his courage. "Go ahead," was his counsel. He never for a moment doubted of final success. And considering the great outlay already made, they wisely gave in to him.