1781 A PEOJECTED CANAL 69 



To Miss White. Selborne, April 9, 1781. 



Dear Molly, — It is full time that I should sit down, and 

 return my best thanks to your father and you, and my 

 other relations for the many good offices that I experienced 

 at S. Lambeth and London. 



On the road I found the dust very troublesome : yet I 

 got safe to Alton at five o'clock. You need not for the 

 future suffer any inconvenience on similar occasions, for 

 Mr. Edwards, the Hants Map-man, is going to make a canal 

 from Chertsey to Alton ; so that you may come all the way 

 as far as Alton by water. Moreover, he intends to bring a 

 canal up to Bishop's Sutton, Bassat's village, from Winton ; 

 and then to bore a hole for five miles from Alton under 

 Bentworth, Medsted, &c., and out at Eopley-dean; and so 

 to make a junction of the Wey, and the Itching. You may 

 smile at this proposal; but the projector tells me that the 

 tunnelling part will be the most profitable and easy to be 

 managed; because the chalk, when burnt into lime, and 

 the ashes of 4,000 barges of peat made by the burning, will, 

 at half the present - price of lime and ashes, produce 

 £31,371 ; besides infinite advantage to the lands ! Edwards 

 has published a pamphlet on this subject, to which I refer 

 you ; and is to have a county-meeting soon. 



But there is a matter at present of more consequence 

 to me, concerning which I wish you would consult your 

 father, and write me word by the first post ; and that is 

 that I sent Goody Hampton, my weeding woman, last 

 Wednesday to the post office with a letter to your uncle 

 Harry, in which I enclosed, or thought I had enclosed, half 

 a £10 bank-note. But lo, nephew Samson* is come up 

 express to tell me that the letter came safe and unrumpled, 

 but in it no half bank note. Since my nephew came I have 

 examined every probable place, but to no purpose. The 



* Son of Henry White of Fyfield. 



