[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] a public navigable river. It was a public nuisance to obstruct the navigation thereof without authority of law." At the time of this famous expedition the water commissioners had already officially adopted the plan for a low siphon bridge, to be "built over an embankment of stone, filling up the whole of the natural channel, and with only one archway on the New York side only eighty feet high." The estimates made on the basis of this plan indicated a cost of but $426,000, as against nearly $936,000 for the construction of a high bridge; so that the abandonment of the adopted project would mean an added expense to the city of more than half a million dollars. Moreover, the original calculations of the total probable cost of the aqueduct from the Croton had by this time been found to be ridiculously small, and it began to be realized that the ultimate aggregate would approximate or exceed $10,000,000. The disastrous effects of the financial panic of 1837 were at that period being fell in their full force. In such circumstances it is highly improbable that any change in the plan for the aqueduct bridge would have been made if the people of Westchester had not com-pelled it by their aggressive acts.