Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

There was much more snow beyond the mountains, which fell some time since, than on this side. The melting of this, together with rains much heavier than we have had here, has occasioned the freshets, the height of which has not been surpassed in many places these twenty years. The Potomac is about one mile and a quarter wide here at Alexandria: ten miles above, at the Little Falls, the whole river passes in the width of about 70 feet. Thirty-six feet above the usual level of the water, was erected a few years since a chain bridge, the third that has been erected there. The other two, however, were not chain bridges. During the freshet the water rose quite to the bridge: the wood and logs lodged against it: and for a long time it obstinately refused to yield. The wood increasing, at length it tilted one side upward and was swept away—the two principal chains were however so well secured at the abutments that they still remain. When the water rose to this height the river became about a fifth of a mile wide, and the torrent poured over the trees at the height of between 10 and 15 feet. This is the third bridge which that company has lost within 9 years.

At the bridge lately built across the Potomac at Washington it is computed that there have lodged from twelve to eighteen hundred cords of wood. A considerable part of the way on the eastern side, it is lodged several feet deep and so firmly that for several rods from the bridge the wood-men walk about as on dry ground.