Thomson is sure this must have been about 1781. Several writers have taken this as a serious proposal, including the engineer James Leslie in a respected journal. Of course filling in the canal would not have retrieved the money expended in digging it. As a result of the financial crisis, the funds were not forthcoming and it was decided to sell shares by roup (public auction) on 14 August 1781; presumably these were forfeited shares (i.e. not additional shares). The shares taken up were heavily discounted and not all were taken; the final eleven shares were advertised in the Glasgow Journal on 21 March 1782. Extension westwards At this time extent of the canal was the already described, and the western end was at Gartcraig. (See below for a discussion of this location.) The new proprietors met on 15 April 1782 and resolved "to carry the Monkland Canal from its previous termination to a point nearer the city" and to put into effect measures to deal with "such parts of the canal as shall require cleaning so as to give it four feet of depth of water, being the original depth". The extension to the canal basin at Townhead, seems to have been completed remarkably quickly. It extended from Gartcraig to Blackhill, and separately at the lower level from there to Townhead. On 16 April 1783 a notice of meeting stated that a forthcoming meeting would "consider a plan and estimate for a junction between the upper and lower parts of the canal at Blackhill, and for a road from the present termination at the West End to the River Clyde". The canal then consisted of two sections, from Sheepford to Townhead, interrupted by the inconvenient connection at Blackhill, where coals were moved between the two sections by use of the incline: this seems to have been no more than a slope surfaced either for road wagons or provided with rails. The coal was transhipped from barge to waggon and from waggon to barge. Thomson says that there "is no means of ascertaining the nature of the proposed junction at Blackhill. Supplies of water were so meagre that locks were certainly out of the question and in all likelihood they used some modification of Watt's scheme for letting waggons down an incline, the descending waggons pulling up the unloaded waggons". Cleland, writing later, says, "The communication between these levels was