Sharman Crawford, Esq., M.P., the first prominent advocate of tenant-right, to attend a public meeting of the Ulster Association, and to spend a few days with him at his residence at Crawfordsburn, near Bangor.

Belfast was then a town of comparatively little importance, though it had already made a fair start in commerce and industry.

As our steamer approached the head of the Lough, a large number of labourers were observed--with barrows, picks, and spades--scooping out and wheeling up the slob and mud of the estuary, for the purpose of forming what is now known as Queen's Island, on the eastern side of the river Lagan.

The work was conducted by William Dargan, the famous Irish contractor; and its object was to make a straight artificial outlet--the Victoria Channel--by means of which vessels drawing twenty-three feet of water might reach the port of Belfast.

Before then, the course of the Lagan was tortuous and difficult of navigation; but by the straight cut, which was completed in 1846, and afterwards extended further seawards, ships of large burden were enabled to reach the quays, which extend for about a mile below Queen's Bridge, on both sides of the river.
It was a saying of honest William Dargan, that "when a thing is put anyway right at all, it takes a vast deal of mismanagement to make it go wrong." He had another curious saying about "the calf eating the cow's belly," which, he said, was not right, "at all, at all." Belfast illustrated his proverbial remarks.