Alexandria Gazette

The Flood in the Potomac.

The change of the wind to the northwest, blowing cold and dry, has happily relieved the mercantile community in Georgetown from their justly anticipated danger. The water in the river had fallen yesterday about six inches below the height it held on Sunday evening, and the vacated store-rooms are in good part replenished with their former contents. We hear of no losses worth recording. At the Little Falls the scene attracts hundreds of pleased spectators, who muse at the wild and fantastic attitudes assumed by the vast collections of ice at that point. The bridge itself is intact, and will doubtless continue so, though the artificial approach to it from this side is seriously scooped away. Passage, however, is effected by the adventurous on foot over the ice. Piles of ice, varying in height to twenty feet, line the canal tow-path, and the canal bridge there is no longer in being. Such is the number and such the extent of the masses of ice on the Little Falls flats, that it is said ice may be found there till July. The canal has suffered two breaks in that vicinity, one of about two hundred feet in length, the other about a fourth of that extent.

At the Long Bridge the appearance of the ice and river is quite unusual. Without being able to appeal to the testimony of the "oldest inhabitant" on the subject, we can say that for more than twenty years nothing like it has been presented. The ice has been piled up in longer or shorter ridges, differing in elevations up to twenty-five feet above the level. Much of this, we think, will be subdued only by the slow operation of the sun, for it seems to be protected from the river current by the action of the long dead wall. Though only about 120 feet of the bridge track have been actually carried away, yet the whole of the trussseling between the causeway and the crib and the crib-work over the Virginia channel is put beyond repair. The first thaw or even warm sun will loosen the vast pressure of ice resting against it, and it must go. Should this be a correct view, would it not be well to commence removing what planking and timbers are worth saving at once? If good for nothing else, the poor would know what to do with them for firewood.

The Washington channel above the draw is still locked fast; below all is clear and open.-Nat. Int.