Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/481

422 shall be lawful for the proprietors of the said adjacent lands to open cross-ditches into the said canals." I copy from the charter.

This condition has been outrageously abused by the corporation. Instead of keeping the canal as a means of draining the adjacent lands, the banks have been raised to store the water till the canal is much higher than the lands adjoining. If a farmer on the west side wants to drain his land, he must adopt the heroic course of Captain Wallace and tunnel under the canal.

On this vital condition, which accounts largely for the immense sums of public money voted for the canal in Congress and the State Legislatures of Virginia and North Carolina, the Canal Company has long ago forfeited its charter. Instead of using the public money for the good of the farmers owning the swamp lands, it has used it to destroy those lands, with the view, probably, of eventually buying them at its own price.

But they have overshot the mark, and have ruined their own property more hopelessly than they have injured the land. They have allowed another canal to be run almost parallel to theirs (the Chesapeake & Albemarle), which has diverted all their trade, and which bears large vessels and steamers. The new canal has a much longer