He cried: “The works of Rome were built by soldiers and by slaves. Ours was voted for by freemen, was constructed by freemen—and we make the aspiration that in all ages to come it may bless freemen, and freemen only!”
The president of the Croton Aqueduct Board followed, saying: “The obstacles have disappeared! The hill has been leveled or pierced, the stream and the valley have been overleaped, the rock has been smitten! Nature, yielding to human industry, perseverance, and skill, no longer withholds the boon she had before denied us. A river, whose pure waters are gathered from the lakes of the mountain-range, arrested and diverted in its course, after pouring its tribute through a permanent and spacious archway for more than forty miles, at length reaches our magnificent reservoirs, from whence it is conducted by subterranean conduits, extending one hundred and thirty additional miles, throughout the greatest portion of our city.”
When he had finished, the ladies and gentlemen of the Sacred Music Society sang the ode which General George P. Morris had written at the request of the Corporation of the City of New York:
“Gushing from this living fountain,
Music pours a falling strain,
As the Goddess of the Mountain
Comes with all her sparkling train....
“Gently o’er the rippling water,
In her coral-shallop bright,
Glides the rock-king’s dove-eyed daughter,