AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 261 



The quantity of land on the west side of the river, requiring to be drained, 

 Las been yariously estimated. David B. Douglass, in 1841, in a report to 

 John G-. Costar, respecting the improvement of that portion of which Mr. 

 Costar was then the owner, said that he " found it difficult, upon examina- 

 tion, to realize more than twenty square miles, or 12,800 acres," in all. 

 Others have estimated the quantity at 16,000, and some, Avho probably in- 

 cluded the low lands on both sides of the river, at 30,000 acres. Its extent 

 is not clearly defined on any map hitherto published, and can be ascer- 

 tained correctly only by actual survey. But if the quantity be set down 

 at 13,000 acres, or only 200 more than the lowest computation, it will pro- 

 bably be near enough to the true amount for the purposes of a preliminary 

 estimate of the cost of embanking and draining the whole farcel, and show- 

 ing the commercial results, which, when completed, the work may be fairly 

 expected to produce. 



The embankment, upon which the track of the New Jersey railroad is 

 laid, forms a very complete protection against the tide in Newark bay and 

 Passaic river, at the southern end of the tract proposed to be drained, and 

 will relieve the work of the expense of constructing and maintaining an 

 embankment of considerable extent, which, although not perhaps where the 

 draining engineer would have placed it, will serve his purpose very com- 

 pletely. 



From an examination of several maps, it appears that an embankment of 

 about ten and a half miles in length will be required, to extend from the 

 point at which the railroad meets the Hackensack, to where the upland in 

 Bergen county forms the river bank ; and on the other, or western side of 

 the marsh, at the foot of Belleville ridge, a catch-water drain of seven and 

 a half or eight miles in length must be excavated to receive, and conduct 

 to Passaic river, the water which may flow down the eastern slope of that 

 ridge, and which, if not intercepted and conducted away before reaching 

 the low level of the meadow, must be raised again by machinery ; the cost 

 of which operation may be saved, by intercepting it at such height, that it 

 will flow to the river by its own gravity. If the embankments are so con- 

 structed as to exclude the tide from the bay and rivers, and the drain, at 

 the western boundary of the tract, intercepts the water which now flows 

 down the ridge to the meadows, the f.omplete drainage of the whole will be 

 effected by raising and conducting away that portion of the rain fall, which 

 will be left, after deducting the amount required for the support of vege- 

 tation, and that which will be carried off by natural evaporation. 



The whole amount of rain falling upon the tract may be set down at 

 forty-eight inches per annum ; and as none of this can flow away naturally, 

 and as the evaporation from the soil will, in that situation, perhaps be at 

 nearly the minimum rate, it will not be safe to estimate the proportion 

 which will remain to be raised and disposed of by artificial means, at less 

 than two-thirds of the whole, or thirty-two inches in depth per annum ; 

 and, as at the ordinary high water in the river, t'he tide rises to nearlj^ the 

 level of the present general surface of the meadow, and at low water ia 



