|
Judge Custis's countenance fell, thinking of another hat which had
entered his family. The barge on which they embarked had numerous passengers, and soon came
to a small lock-town and turn-bridge, and, a few miles beyond, entered
upon a serious piece of work, leaving the trough of a creek, of which
the canal had previously availed itself, and cutting through the low
ridge of the peninsula, which, to Judge Custis, seemed almost
mountainous. He was of that patriotic opulence, just short of
imagination, which rejoiced in public works, and this little canal, only
fourteen miles long, was, with two or three exceptions, the only
achieved work in the Union, turnpikes and bridges omitted. Built by the
national government, by three of the states it connected, and by private
subscription, it had involved two and a quarter million dollars of
expense - no light burden when the population was, by the previous
census, less than eight million whites in all the land. Judge Custis's family troubles faded from his mind as he looked up at
the deep cutting, nearly seventy feet in height of banks, with sands of
yellow and green, and stains of iron and strata of marl, some of which
had fallen back into the excavation and threatened the navigation again;
and, when he saw a bridge, called the Buck, leap the chasm ninety feet
overhead, by a span that then seemed sublimity itself, he touched
Clayton and said: "Never mind my failures! Thank God, I'm a Whig." "Goy! there's nothing like it," said Clayton. Not far from this point the canal passed an old church and graveyard at
a bridge where Mr. Clayton said his namesake, the revolutionary Governor
of Delaware, was buried. Here Randel's plain conveyance took them in,
and in the moonlight they drove a few miles to Mr. Randel's estate, near
the banks of a river, under a long table-mountain of barren clay and
iron stain, on the farther shore. "Here," said Randel, "is my future estate of Randalia. Here I shall see
all the commerce of the canal passing by, and garnishee every vessel
that pays my tolls to the Canal Company." "Randel," asked Mr. Clayton, "what were those stakes I saw some distance
back, running north and south across the fields?" "A railroad survey." "Who is making it?" "They say Meshach Milburn, of Princess Anne." "Goy!" exclaimed Clayton, "I'll beat him." * * * * * For two or three days the three men, still studying the canal suit,
drove over a picturesque country, visiting the old manor of the
Labadists and their Bohemian patron, Augustine Herman, the homestead of
the late treaty minister, Bayard, and the ancient Welsh Baptist churches
among the hills of the Elk and Christiana, where some of Cromwell's
warriors lay. It was the favorite land of Whitefield, and in the
neighborhood was an iron furnace Judge Custis examined with melancholy
interest, as one of the investments of General Washington's father more
than a hundred years before, when the Indians made the iron. They also
went to Turkey Point, where the British army was disembarked to capture
Philadelphia, and Knyphausen's division obliterated the history of
Delaware by carrying her records away from Newcastle. Returning from one
of these pleasant journeys, two messages from different points seared
Judge Custis's eyeballs:
|