The neighbourhoods of Greenock, Port Glasgow, and Paisley contain most of these residences, because these towns have longest enjoyed the benefits of improved manufactures and commerce. The introduction of steam-boats for the conveyance of live stock to distant markets has increased the value of land on the west coast generally, from the Orkneys to Liverpool, and especially in Dumfriesshire, Kircudbrighthire, Wigtonshire, and Ayrshire. The formation of harbours and piers at Troon by the Duke of Portland, and at Ardrossan and Saltcoats by the Earl of Eglinton and others, has opened a new market for the coal and lime raised in the interior, and brought down to these ports by railroads. The great increase of the commerce and shipping of Greenock and Port Glasgow is well known. The introduction, by Mr. Thom, of a canal of water along the summit of a ridge of hills, which in its descent to the Clyde will turn thirty overshot wheels, each 50 ft. in diameter, is one of the grandest and most original improvements which have ever been made for any town. By embanking the Clyde so as to confine its waters to a narrower channel in some places, and by the employment of machinery in others, that channel has been deepened so as to admit vessels of 200 tons to reach Glasgow; whereas, before, nothing but a common barge could go farther up than Port Glasgow. A canal, which had been projected from Glasgow to Ardrossan, by Paisley and Johnstone, and executed as far as the latter village, has, by the deepening of the Clyde, been in a great degree superseded, and will probably not be completed; but on this canal vessels with passengers are carried along at the rate of nine miles an hour by horses, and a new plan is now under experiment for applying steam so as to effect the same object, and even to increase the speed.
