CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL.
To the Editors of the National Intelligencer.
GENTLEMEN:— It may gratify many of your readers, as it certainly will those who are Stockholders in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, to learn, that the late severe storm and heavy fall of rain which produced so much damage in other respects, did not injure, in the slightest degree, that part of the Canal between the Basin, at Georgetown, and Harper’s Ferry–nor is it known that any injury was sustained by the Canal and Dams now constructing above that point.
A very small breach was made in the Berm bank of that part of the Canal just finished in this City, by the unprecedented flood of water from the land. This has been repaired at a very trifling cost.
It is now eight weeks since the new portion of Canal between Seneca and Harper’s Ferry, (a distance of forty miles) was first opened for use; since which time the trade upon it, and upon the remaining twenty miles below it, has not been interrupted by accident for a single hour.
It was the intention of the Canal Company to have completed the forty miles of Canal above Harper’s Ferry, and now under contract, by the opening of the trade of the next Spring; but the return of Cholera to the line last Summer, has defeated this purpose. It will, however, be completed as high as the fourth Dam, twelve miles above Shepherdstown; and in order to obviate the difficulty which the Dam above Williamsport would present to the river trade from Cumberland, it is understood that the Company have contracted for a temporary Lock, to be completed by the 10th of March next, to pass boats around the Dam. This being done, we may anticipate the arrival, in our District, of a considerable quantity of Cumberland Coal during the next summer.
