Note 68 — Chapter VI · James Watt, Mathematical Instrument Maker.

The author of ‘Glasgow, Past and Present’ thus writes:—“Last week (Nov. 1851) I was crossing the ferry at the west end of Tradeston, and in the course of our passage over we turned round the bow of a large ship. The ferryman, looking up to her leviathan bulwarks, exclaimed, ‘She came up here yesterday, drawing eighteen feet water!’ Now, upon this very spot seventy years ago, when a very little boy, I waded across the river, my feet never being off the ground, and the water not reaching above my arm-pits. The depth at that time could not have been much more than three feet.”