Ross-shire, where the railway has not yet penetrated,--travels
throughout on Telford's roads. The number of large bridges and other
great engineering masterpieces on this network of roads is enormous;
among the most famous and the most beautiful, are the exquisite single
arch which spans the Spey just beside the lofty rearing rocks of Craig
Ellachie, and the bridge across the Dee, beneath the purple heather-clad
braes of Ballater. Altogether, on Telford's Highland roads alone, there
are no fewer than twelve hundred bridges.

Nor were these the only important labours by which Telford ministered to
the comfort and well-being of his Scotch fellow-countrymen. Scotland's
debt to the Eskdale stonemason is indeed deep and lasting. While on
land, he improved her communications by his great lines of roads, which
did on a smaller scale for the Highland valleys what railways have since
done for the whole of the civilized world; he also laboured to improve
her means of transit at sea by constructing a series of harbours along
that bare and inhospitable eastern coast, once almost a desert, but now
teeming with great towns and prosperous industries. It was Telford who
formed the harbour of Wick, which has since grown from a miserable
fishing village into a large town, the capital of the North Sea herring
fisheries. It was he who enlarged the petty port of Peterhead into the
chief station of the flourishing whaling trade. It was he who secured
prosperity for Fraserburgh, and Banff, and many other less important
centres; while even Dundee and Aberdeen, the chief commercial cities of
the east coast, owe to him a large part of their present extraordinary
wealth and industry. When one thinks how large a number of human beings
have been benefited by Telford's Scotch harbour works alone, it is
impossible not to envy a great engineer his almost unlimited power of
permanent usefulness to unborn thousands of his fellow-creatures.