Page:Rivers, Canals, Railways of Great Britain.djvu/193

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Fractions to be taken as for a Quarter of a Ton, and as for a Quarter of a Mile.

No Wharfage to be taken for any Goods unless they have been upon the Wharfs or Quays more than Twenty-four Hours.

The Wharfage Rates are fixed by the Bye-Laws of the Company.

By an act of 39th George III. entitled,  'An Act for amending and rendering more effectual an Act passed in the Thirty-third Year of the Reign of his present Majesty, entitled, An Act for making and maintaining a navigable Canal from Loch Gilp to Loch Crinan, in the shire of Argyll,'  the company are authorized to raise or borrow the sum of £30,000, (although the whole of the sum of £150,000, allowed to be raised by the above-recited act, may not have been raised,) on mortgage of the undertaking, by granting annuities, or by creating new shares, or by bonds, or promissory notes under the common seal of the company; but as there afterwards. appeared little probability of raising the above sum, in consequence of many of the subscribers being unable to make good their engagements, the lord chief baron and other the barons of the court of exchequer, of Scotland, were directed, under authority of an act of 39th George III. cap. 71, entitled,  'An Act for empowering the Company of Proprietors of the Forth and Clyde Navigation to repay into the Court of Exchequer, in Scotland, the Sum advanced to them for the Purpose of completing the said Navigation; for repealing so much of an Act of the Twenty-fourth Year of his present Majesty as relates to the said Company, and for enabling the Barons of the said Court of Exchequer to advance Part of the Sum, so to be received, to the Company of Proprietors of the Crinan Canal, on certain Conditions,'  to pay to the Crinan Canal Company, on security of the rates and duties, the sum of £25,000: the interest of which sum, and the other moiety of the sum of £50,000, to be paid by the Forth and Clyde Navigation Company, is by the same act directed to be laid out in the repair of the roads and bridges in the highlands of Scotland.

The chief object of this ship canal is the shortening of the passage between the ports in the highlands, or the Caledonian Canal and the River Clyde, by avoiding the circuitous route round the peninsula of Cantire. The distance thus saved is more than seventy miles, and when we take into consideration the difficulty