was begun, and is not ended even in our day, of making a trout and salmon stream into one of the busiest, navigable highways of the world. This year further improvements have been decided upon, so that the monsters of our day, with 16,000-horse-power turbine engines, may be built near Glasgow. Watt also made surveys for a canal between Perth and Coupar Angus, for the well-known Crinan Canal and other projects in the Western Highlands, as also for the great Caledonian and the Forth and Clyde Canals.

The Perth Canal was forty miles long through a rough country, and took forty-three days, for which Watt's fee, including expenses, was $400. Labor, even of the highest kind, was cheap in those times. We note his getting thirty-seven dollars for plans of a bridge over the Clyde. Watt prepared plans for docks and piers at Port Glasgow and for a new harbor at Ayr. His last and most important engineering work in Scotland was the survey of the Caledonian Canal, made in the autumn of 1773, through a district then without roads. "An incessant rain kept me," he writes, "for three days as wet as water could "make me. I could scarcely preserve my journal

"book."

Suffice it to note that he saved enough money to be able to write, "Supposing the engine to stand good "for itself, I am able to pay all my debts and some little

'thing more, so that I hope in time to be on a par with the world."

We are now to make one of the saddest announcements saving dishonor that it falls to man to make. Watt's wife died in childbed in his absence. He was called home from surveying the Caledonian Canal. Upon arrival, he stands paralysed for a time at the door, unable to summon strength to enter the ruined home. At last the door opens and closes and we close our eyes upon the scene-no words here that would not be an offence. The rest is silence.

Watt tried to play the man, but he would have been less than man if the ruin of his home had not made him a changed man. The recovery of mental equipoise proved for a time quite beyond his power. He could do all that man could do, "who could do more is none." The light of his life had gone out.

Boulton Partnership

CHAPTER V

BOULTON PARTNERSHIP

FTER Watt was restored to himself the first sub

AFTER

66

ject which we find attracting him was the misfortunes of Roebuck, whose affairs were now in the hands of his creditors. "My heart bleeds for him," says Watt, "but I can do nothing to help him. I have stuck by him, indeed, until I have hurt myself." Roebuck's affairs were far too vast to be affected by all that Watt had or could have borrowed. For the thousand pounds Watt had paid on Roebuck's account to secure the patent, he was still in debt to Black. This was subsequently paid, however, with interest, when Watt became prosperous.

We now bid farewell to Roebuck with genuine regret. He had proved himself a fine character throughout, just the kind of partner Watt needed. It was a great pity that he had to relinquish his interest in the patent, when, as we shall see, it would soon have saved him from bankruptcy and secured him a handsome competence. He must ever rank as one of the men almost indispensable to Watt in the development of his engine, and a dear, true friend.

The darkest hour comes before the dawn, and so it