He was quite ready to prove that it would be an easy thing for Mr. Berkeley to have a small town on his property, if the work should be begun in the way which he (Mr. Muller) recommended. It was plain enough that a town was needed in this locality. The people living along the river for several miles below had to go to Boontown for their groceries and other merchandise, and their crops and produce had to be hauled to that place to be shipped to the city and other points.
Moreover, a little town or village on this beautiful part of the river-bank would attract people who would like to have a rural home not too far from the city. Nothing of this kind was offered at Boontown. That place was not attractive, and its river-front was particularly disagreeable.
If Mr. Berkeley would lay out his land along the river in building lots, and buy, perhaps, some adjoining tracts, and then build a wharf, so that the steamboats could stop there, and put up a store, the thing would be begun, and the place would then grow of itself. Mr. Muller was ready to stock and take charge of the store. That was in his line of business.
Mr. Berkeley listened with great attention to the long discourse of his visitor, and then remarked that the idea was not a new one, and had been seriously thought of before.
His father had greatly desired to have a small settlement on his place, and had gone so far as to put up a wharf, so that people could come up here by boat and look at the property, and the produce of the surrounding country could be shipped from this point. But the first steamboat that stopped there struck on a sunken wreck, that lay not far from the wharf, and old Mr. Berkeley had to pay for the damages done to her. Disgusted with this, he had had the wharf taken down, and the piles pulled up, for fear that some other steamboat would make a stop, and more damages would have to be paid.
“But could not a wharf be built farther out, or at some other point?” asked Mr. Muller.
“There is no other point suitable for a steamboat-landing on my property,” said Mr. Berkeley. “The channel makes a bend inland here, and above and below the water is shallow for some distance out; besides it would be very expensive to build a wharf into the deep water beyond the sunken wreck. It is not the part that you may see sticking out of the mud that is dangerous,” he continued. “It is another portion of the vessel which is sunk in the channel, but not far from the bank. The condition of my fortune does not warrant me in removing this wreck, which has been there so long that it has probably become a part of the bank. You see, therefore, that as it is impossible for us to have a steamboat wharf here at present, it is useless to talk of starting a town.”
Thus the matter was disposed of, and Mr. Muller discovered that although he had not had the slightest idea of the fact when he told Chap the story of the three brothers, the sunken ship had, after all, very much to do with his business at Hyson Hall.
