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454 BALTIMORE 9. McKIM.
only navigable entrance to this cove, is by a narrow channel from
the east, every encroachment upon it, by wharfing or making fast
land, following the directions of the streets of the city, must be
from the north, from the west, or from the south; and that Gay
street approaches this cove, now called the basin, in a direct line
from the north, and terminates at its intersection, at right angles
with Pratt street, a part of the south side of which passes a few
feet above the head of what is now called Smith's dock.
The land now claimed is a strip about twenty-nine feet wide,
lying between the east side of Smith's dock, and an elongation of
the east side of Gay street, from the south side of Pratt street into
the basin, a distance of about eight hundred and sixteen feet; with
an east extension, at right angles from its south end, of about
eighty-six feet. It appears, and is admitted, that the tide water
of the basin originally flowed a considerable distance above the
present termination of Gay street; that the patent for the tract
called Cole's Harbour, included the lands, on which this part of
the city was laid out, only to the line of the tide water as it origi-
nally flowed, and no further; that no patent had ever been issued
for any part of the land which was originally covered by the tide
water of the basin; that the whole of the strip of land in question,
at one time, formed a part of the bed of this navigable basin;
that John Smithy who was the owner of a lot on Gay street ex-
tending to the tide, applied to the port wardens of Baltimore for
permission to extend his wharf into the basin, together with ten or
fifteen feet of Gay street; that, on the 26th of September, 1786,
permission was granted to extend his wharf, as prayed, until it
intersected a line drawn east from a point eighty feet south of the
south side of Conway street, and parallel thereto, together with
eleven feet of Gay street continued along the front of said wharf;
but instead of taking only eleven feet, the wharf was carried out,
as it now is, to about twenty-nine feet on Gay street; that this
strip of land had been altogether made and raised upon the bed of
the basin by John Smith and others, who completed it about the
year 1796; and it was not, in any sense, an alluvion, or attached
as such to any other fast land; that, upon ground made near and
fronting the whole of this strip of land, warehouses had been built;
mad that John Smith, and those who claimed under him, for some
years, charged and received wharfage; but in the year 1803, the
city began to collect wharfage, and continued their collections until
about the year 1828.
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