48 VISIT OF IWAN ALEXIOWITZ 



the police, for which many are already famous. Though their 

 foundations are now so recent, and so well remembered, yet their 

 origin will puzzle posterity as much as we are now puzzled to 

 ascertain the beginning of those which time has in some measure 

 destroyed. Your new buildings, your streets, put me in mind of 

 those of the city of Pompeii where I was a few years ago : I at- 

 tentively examined everything there, particularly the footpath 

 which runs along the houses. They appeared to have been con- 

 siderably 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 know- 

 ledge 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 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 incor- 

 porated ; 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 musksquash.* It 

 is owing to this happy contrivance that so many thousand acres of 

 meadow have been rescued from the Schuylkill [and Delaware], 

 which now both enricheth and embellisheth so much of the neigh- 

 bourhood of our city. Our brethren of Salem, in New Jersey, 

 have carried the art of banking to a still higher degree of perfec- 

 tion." "It is really an admirable contrivance, which greatly 

 redounds to the honour of the parties concerned, and shows a 

 spirit of discernment and perseverance which is highly praise- 

 wortky ; if the Virginians would imitate your example, the state 

 of their husbandry would greatly improve ; I have not heard of 



* Musquash, the Indian name of the musk rat [Fiber zibethicus, L.) ; an animal 

 well known in the United States for its troublesome operations of burrotving in 

 embankments along streams. 



