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 cut, 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, tools and men had to be made; and Stephenson had to make both!
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 were 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-load after waggon-load of earth was thrown on for weeks and weeks: but 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.
CHAT MOSS.
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 up. The bog, they were afraid, might swallow up all their funds, as it had done 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.
Monstrous stories were afloat of the terrible accidents taking place there. Every now and then the stage drivers brought into Manchester the astonishing news of men, horses, carts, and Stephenson himself submerged and sunk for ever in the insatiable quagmire! Time corrected one only to publish another. Newsmongers were kept in a state of delightful excitement, and tea-table gossip was spiced to suit the most credulous and marvel-loving taste, until the Moss was conquered, as conquered it was acknowledged to be, when, six months after the directors had met to vote to leave it to its original unproductiveness, they were driven over it on a smooth and secure rail to Manchester!
Another tough job was tunnelling Liverpool—excavating a mile and a third of road through solid rock. Night and day the boring, blasting, and hewing were kept in vigorous execution. Sometimes the miners were deluged with water, sometimes they were in danger of being overwhelmed by heavy falls of wet sand from overhead. Once, when Stephenson was gone from town, a mass of loose earth came tumbling on the heads of the workmen, frightening them, if nothing more. On his return they were in a most refractory state, complaining of the dangers, and stoutly refusing to go back to work. Wasting no time on words, Stephenson shouldered a pick-axe, and called for recruits to follow. Into the tunnel he marched, and the whole gang after him. Nothing more was heard of fears, and the work went bravely and steadily on.
Besides laying out all the work, Stephenson had to make the tools. All the waggons, trucks, carriages, switches, crosses, signals, were planned and manufactured under his superintendence, besides meeting and providing for a thousand exigencies constantly occurring in a new enterprise like this, giving full scope to all the sagacity, invention, and good-humour which naturally belonged to him.