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.
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