DUMBARTON ROCK (p. [366]).
To this once rural spot the centre of interest and authority of Modern Glasgow has now flitted; and here the city has set up its Valhalla. In the heart of the Square a statue of Sir Walter Scott towers on its high pedestal; and surrounding it are ranks of other monuments—equestrian statues, and figures erect and seated: among them those of Sir John Moore and Lord Clyde, both of them “Glasgow callants” who won for their native city war-laurels to place beside its trophies of peaceful industry; and of Thomas Campbell, the poet, who was born in the High Street, within a stonecast of the old College Buildings. Chief of the public edifices that face the Square are the new Municipal Buildings, in which, after several shiftings from the venerable Tolbooth, the City Fathers have set up their gods. The foundation stone of this magnificent pile was laid in October, 1883, and it has cost the town nearly £600,000. Here would be a convenient standpoint whence to survey the more recent spread and growth of the city, were this a description of Glasgow instead of a glance down the course of the Clyde. From George Square as a centre, a radius of fully two and a half miles would now be required in order to draw a circle embracing the whole area of the city. In that space, and included within the municipal boundaries, is a population which in 1891 numbered 656,000. But the circle would enclose also the police burghs of Govan, Partick, and Kinning Park, which, although partially surrounded by Glasgow, and essentially a part of the same urban community, have separate municipal organisations. Adding these and the suburban villages and populous areas attached to, but outside the circumference of, the city, and making allowance for the growth of five years, we have a greater “geographical Glasgow” which Sir James Bell and Mr. Paton, in their recent work, estimate to contain no fewer than 900,000 souls. So that since the beginning of the century the increase has been something like tenfold in population; while in wealth, in trade, and in the multiplication of the resources of civilisation, its progress has been, perhaps, still more marked.
The classic but now much-befouled Kelvin is at its mouth the boundary between the city and the adjoining burgh of Partick; and when it passes this point the Clyde leaves Glasgow territory behind it, without, however, escaping from the sphere of its administrative authority. Very different is this straight, broad highway of commerce—lined by quay walls and wet and graving docks, by shipbuilding yards and boiler-sheds, by factories, timber depôts, and railway sidings, burdened with craft innumerable, and overhung by the shapes of great iron vessels (the pride of Glasgow and the Clyde) in every stage of construction—from the stream that winds and gleams like a serpent between its green banks only a few miles above. The opposing shores send up a perpetual din of iron smiting upon iron: the deafening and yet, to the understanding ear, inspiriting sound of the Clyde’s most famous industry—that of shipbuilding. The broad tide of waters is churned by paddles and propellers innumerable. It is muddy and evil-smelling, for Glasgow has not repaid its debt to the Clyde with gratitude, and still makes its river the receptacle of its sewage and garbage. All this, however, is to be changed; already the experiment of sewage purification has been for some years in operation at Dalmarnock, and shortly a scheme intended to embrace the whole north side of Glasgow will be at work on ground purchased by the Corporation at Dalmuir, some miles down the river. So that in time trout may venture back to Kelvin, and the “stately salmon” itself be seen basking in the sandbanks opposite the Broomielaw, or stemming the “amber-coloured Clyde,” once more pure and sweet as well as “beneficent and strong.”
Often the channel itself is choked with mist and overhung with smoke; and vessels and houses loom vaguely through the haze, or stand out in startling relief against their dim background when the sun manages to send his shafts through the mist and to light up river and shipping. Nowhere are there such sunsets to be seen as in this murky and rainy and dinsome clime of Glasgow Harbour.
To embark on board one of the river-steamers at the Broomielaw is a convenient mode of surveying what remains to be seen of the river and its surroundings. Steering down-stream by the broad and deep channel between the lines and thickets of masts and funnels of the craft moored to either bank, or assembled in the great dock basins, there is plenty of time to reflect on the changes that have come over the scene, even since Campbell deplored that Nature’s face was banished and estranged from the “once romantic shore of his native Clyde,” and the face of Heaven was no more reflected in its soot-begrimed waters—
“That for the daisied greensward, down thy stream
Unsightly brick-lanes smoke and clanking engines gleam.”
The days when the river could be forded at high-water opposite Govan Point, and when a voyage up or down stream was a series of bumpings from shoal to shoal, seem almost as far removed from our own as the date of the canoes of our remote ancestors that have been found embedded in the ooze of the channel in the course of dredging operations. Yet they belong to the present century; and even after Henry Bell’s Comet inaugurated steam navigation by making her runs between Greenock and Glasgow, the better part of a day has been known to be spent on the trip. In the course of a century and half some sixteen millions have been spent on widening, deepening, and straightening the channel and improving the harbour accommodation of Glasgow; and the revenue of the Clyde Navigation Trust now reaches about £400,000 annually. As the fruit of all this expenditure, the Trust can point to the long lines of quay walls and the magnificent Queen’s and Govan Docks, and to a broad and straight waterway which, from Glasgow Bridge to Port Glasgow, has a uniform depth of 28 feet at high tide.