Your New Buildings, Your Streets, Put Me In Mind Of Those
Of The City Of Pompeia, Where I Was A Few Years Ago; I Attentively
Examined Everything There, Particularly The Foot-Path Which Runs
Along The Houses.
They appeared to have been considerably worn by
the great number of people which had once travelled over them.
But
now how distant; neither builders nor proprietors remain; nothing is
known! "Why thee hast been a great traveller for a man of thy
years." Few years, Sir, will enable anybody to journey over a great
tract of country; but it requires a superior degree of knowledge to
gather harvests as we go. Pray, Mr. Bertram, what banks are those
which you are making: to what purpose is so much expense and so much
labour bestowed? "Friend Iwan, no branch of industry was ever more
profitable to any country, as well as to the proprietors; the
Schuylkill in its many windings once covered a great extent of
ground, though its waters were but shallow even in our highest
tides: and though some parts were always dry, yet the whole of this
great tract presented to the eye nothing but a putrid swampy soil,
useless either for the plough or for the scythe. The proprietors of
these grounds are now incorporated; we yearly pay to the treasurer
of the company a certain sum, which makes an aggregate, superior to
the casualties that generally happen either by inundations or the
musk squash. It is owing to this happy contrivance that so many
thousand acres of meadows have been rescued from the Schuylkill,
which now both enricheth and embellisheth so much of the
neighbourhood of our city.
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