In 'The Ayrshire Legatees', Miss Rachel Pringle writes to Miss Isabella Todd)
"The weather was cold, bleak, and boisterous, and the waves came rolling in majestic fury towards the shore when we arrived at the Tontine Inn of Ardrossan. What a monument has the late Earl of Eglinton left there of his public spirit! It should embalm his memory in the hearts of future ages, as I doubt not but in time Ardrossan will become a grand emporium; but the people of Saltcoats - a sordid race - complain that it will be their ruin, and the Paisley subscribers to his lordship's canal grow pale when they think of profit." (Chapter 1, letter 2)

Hugh Montgomerie (d. 1819), the 12th Earl of Eglinton, laid the foundation stone for Ardrossan Harbour in 1806 with the vision of creating a major port connected to Glasgow and Paisley by canal; only 11 miles of canal was built before funds ran out and investment ceased.
Galt's Tontine Hotel is undoubtedly the 18-bedroom Eglinton Arms Hotel, built in 1806-07 as a guest residence for the 12th Earl, described in 1820 as "unquestionably, the most superb of any [hotel], out of a great town, in Scotland", empty by the time of a fire in 2000, since demolished and replaced by new housing on Princes Street.