Chapter XXV: Section II: Lines of Communication Between the Mississippi Valley and

THAT OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.

There is no mountain chain between these two valleys; the basin of the great lakes, whose united waters form the St. Lawrence, is separated from the valley of the Mississippi only by a spur of the Alleghany system, not exceeding 450 feet in height, and sinking rapidly down toward the west, so as to be elevated but a few feet above the surface of Lake Michigan. During the rainy season, when the streams are swollen and the marshes of the water-shed are flooded, our Canadian countrymen were wont to pass in boats from Lake Michigan into the Illinois, by the Des Plains. The breadth of this dividing spur is more considerable than its height. It is not a ridge or crest, but rather a table-land, which imperceptibly merges by gentle slopes into the plains that surround it. Its level summit is filled with marshes, and therefore offers great facilities for feeding the canals which traverse it; further west, where it is scarcely higher than the rest of the country, it is often as dry as the surrounding prairies.

FIRST LINE. OHIO CANAL.

Only one work connecting the two valleys is as yet completed, this is the Ohio canal, which traverses that State from North to South, extending from Portsmouth, on the Ohio, to the little city of Cleveland, which has sprung up on the shore of the lake since the canal was made. It is 334 miles in length, and cost nearly 4,500,000 dollars, or about 13,500 dollars per mile. This is low, yet the locks are all of hewn stone; the ground, however, was very favorable. The work was executed at the expense of the State, and was undertaken at the same time at Pennsylvania and Baltimore, on the traces of New York, started in the course of internal improvements. This young State, with a population of farmers, not having a single engineer within her limits, and none of whose citizens had ever seen any other canal than those of New York, has thus, with the aid of some second rate engineers borrowed from that State, constructed a canal longer than any in France, with more skill and intelligence than was displayed by Pennsylvania, in spite of the scientific lights of Philadelphia. This farming population of Ohio, almost wholly of New England origin, has a business instinct, a practical shrewdness, and a readiness to exercise all trades without having learned them, that would be sought in vain in the Anglo-German population of Pennsylvania. The legislators, under whose direction the public works were executed in both States, were, as is usual in the United States, a perfect copy of the mass of their constituents, with all its good and bad qualities. The Ohio canal commissioners added to a noble disinterestedness an admirable good sense, and to them is due the greater part of the glory of having planned and executed it. They were farmers and lawyers, who set themselves about making canals, naturally, easily, and without even a suspicion that in Europe no one dares to undertake such a work without long preparation and scientific studies. Now it is no longer an art in that State to plan and construct canals, but a mere trade; the science of canalling is there become quite an affair of the common people. The first-comer in a bar-room will explain to you, over his glass of whiskey, how to feed the summit level and how to construct a lock. All our mysteries in civil engineering are here fallen into the hands of the public, very much as the methods of descriptive geometry are to be found in the workshops, where they had been handed down by tradition, ages before Monge gave them the sanction of theory.

I have before said that Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois form a great triangle, wholly comprised within the Mississippi valley, with the exception of a narrow strip along the lakes, belonging, of course, to the St. Lawrence basin. The general slope of the surface is from north to south; the streams run mostly in that direction; this is especially true of the great tributaries of the Ohio. This arrangement of the secondary valleys is no less favourable to the construction of canals between the lakes, on the one side, and the Ohio and Mississippi on the other, than the configuration and humidity of the dividing table-land.

SECOND LINE. MIAMI CANAL.

Ohio has constructed another canal, which, starting from Cincinnati on the Ohio, runs north to Dayton, and is called the Miami canal. It is 65 miles in length, and cost nearly 1,000,000 dollars, or 15,400 dollars a mile. By the aid of a grant of land from Congress, and the State's resources, its prolongation is now in progress to Defiance, on the river Maumee, the site of a fortress of that name built by Gen. Wayne after his celebrated victory over the Indians. The Maumee, which was called by the French the Miami of the Lakes, is one of the principal tributaries of Lake Erie, and is to be canalled by the State. The distance from Dayton to Defiance is 125 miles; estimated cost 2,750,000 dollars, or 22,000 dollars per mile.

THIRD LINE. WABASH AND ERIE CANAL.

Ohio and Indiana, with the aid of a grant of land[BU] from Congress, have undertaken in concert a canal, which will connect the Wabash, one of the tributaries of the Ohio, with the Maumee. The greater part of the canal will be parallel to the two rivers, or in their beds; the length of the whole work will be 382 miles, of which 195 are in Indiana, and 87 in Ohio. The greater portion of the Indiana section lateral to the Wabash has been completed, but Ohio has not yet been able to commence her portion, because, owing to an absurd system of establishing boundaries, the mouth of the Maumee, whose whole course is in Ohio, will fall within Michigan.[BV] Ohio protests against this arrangement, Michigan stands firm to her claims; both sides have voted the sums needful for war, and both have taken arms; hostilities have even been begun, but the interference of the Federal government has led the parties to consent to an armistice. In this quarrel, Ohio has reason on her side, but Michigan appeals to the letter of the laws as favourable to her. It is probable that in creating Michigan a State, Congress will attach this strip to Ohio, to whom it is so important.[BW] In this unsettled state of things, Ohio has suspended the execution of her part of a work, which will give new importance to the mouth of the Maumee.

FOURTH LINE. ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL.

The project of a canal from the Chicago, at the southern end of lake Michigan, to the head of steam navigation, that is, to the foot of the falls, in the River Illinois, has long been discussed. It is said to be of very easy construction; and that by means of a cut of the maximum depth of 26 feet, the summit level can be reduced to the level of Lake Michigan, so that the lake can be used as a feeder. It will be 96 miles in length, and will traverse a level or slightly undulating country, bare of trees, and still known by the name given it by the French Canadians, _Prairie_. It is proposed to construct this canal of larger dimensions than is common in the United States, so as to make it navigable by the lake-craft and steamboats. It is one of the most useful works ever undertaken in the world.[BX]

FIFTH LINE. WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CANAL.

The canal which has been commenced by Pennsylvania between the Ohio and the town of Erie, 112 miles in length, and for feeding which extensive works have already been constructed around Lake Conneaut, will make another and a short line of water communication between the basins of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence.

DIFFERENT LINES.

Lastly, two canals are about to be undertaken, which will connect the Pennsylvania works with those of Ohio, and of consequence, form new connections between the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. One of these is the Sandy and Beaver canal, which, beginning at the confluence of the Big Beaver with the Ohio, follows the latter to the mouth of the Little Beaver, ascends the valley of this stream, and passes down that of the Sandy River to the Ohio canal at Bolivar; the length will be 90 miles. From Bolivar to New York by the Ohio canal, Lake Erie, Erie canal, and the Hudson, the distance is 785 miles; by the new canal the distance from Bolivar to Philadelphia, that is, to the ocean, is only 512. The Mahoning canal leaves the Ohio canal at Akron, following the valleys of the Little Cuyahoga, the Mahoning, a tributary of the Big Beaver, and the Big Beaver, to the Ohio; it is about 90 miles in length; the distance from Akron to the river Ohio is 115 miles.

The generally level character of the surface of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois is not less favourable to the construction of railroads than to that of canals. But as capital is scarce in this new country, which is as yet but imperfectly brought under cultivation, but few enterprises of much importance have hitherto been undertaken. The financial companies and institutions, which have always preceded the introduction of canals and railroads, have, however, been already established and are prosperous, and their success is the omen of the approach of the latter. In the absence of companies, the States are ready to adopt the most extensive schemes of public works; for the American of the West is not a whit behind the American of the East in enterprise. At present, I know of but a single railroad actually in process of construction beyond the Ohio, and that does not seem to be pushed forward with much activity; it is the Mad River railroad, which is to extend from Dayton, on the Miami canal, to Sandusky, on the bay of that name in Lake Erie; the length will be 153 miles. Many others have been projected in this region, and Indiana has caused surveys to be made for a railroad extending across the State from north to south, or from New Albany on the Ohio to some point on Lake Michigan.[BY]

WORKS FOR IMPROVING THE NAVIGATION OF THE OHIO, MISSISSIPPI, AND ST. LAWRENCE.

To this head belong the works executed in the beds of the rivers themselves. The Mississippi is the _beau idéal_ of rivers in regard to navigable facilities. From St. Louis to New Orleans, a distance of nearly 1200 miles, there is water enough for steamers of 300 tons throughout the year. Its yellow and muddy waters flow in a deep, although very circuitous channel, and its general breadth is from 800 to 1,000 yards, in places where it is not expanded to a much greater width by low, flat islands, thickly covered with trees. There are no sand-banks in this part of the channel, yet there are formidable dangers in the way of the inexperienced navigator; these are the trunks of trees, that have been carried away from the banks, as has been before mentioned, and in the removal of which the Federal government keeps steam _snag-boats_, the Heliopolis and Archimedes, employed; these boats are provided with a peculiar machinery by means of which they drag the trees up from the bed, and saw them into pieces of an inconsiderable length.

Captain Shreves, who has the command of these boats, and who invented the machinery, is also employed in constructing sunk dams of loose stones in the Ohio, which have the effect of increasing the depth of water in the dry season. He is at present engaged with a flotilla of steamboats in opening the bed of Red River, one of the great tributaries of the Mississippi, which the drift timber has choked up and covered over through a distance of 165 miles.[BZ] At Louisville, the Ohio, whose bed has generally a very slight inclination, has a descent of 22 feet in the distance of two miles, so as to be impassable for steamboats, except during the season of high water. The Louisville and Portland canal has been constructed by a company to avoid this obstruction; it is nearly one mile and three fourths in length, and cost 750,000 dollars.[CA] It receives the largest boats at a rate of toll which for the Henry Clay amounts to 175 dollars, and for the Uncle Sam 190 dollars. It has been proposed that Congress should buy this canal, and make the passage toll-free; and the importance of the navigation of the Ohio would justify the measure.

The St. Lawrence differs essentially from the Mississippi; instead of an expanse of muddy waters, it presents to the eye a clear blue surface. The Mississippi traverses a low, uninhabited, and uninhabitable region, of which the soil consists entirely of sand; or rather of mud deposited by the river-floods; not a stone as large as the fist is to be found, and only a few bluff points are met with which are above the reach of high water, and on which the pale inhabitants struggle unsuccessfully with the pestilential emanations of the surrounding swamps. The St. Lawrence flows through a broken, hilly, and sometimes rugged country, with a fertile soil, everywhere healthful, sprinkled with flourishing villages, which attract the eye of the traveller from a distance by their houses newly white-washed every year, and their churches built in the French style with their spires covered with tin. The Mississippi, like the Nile, has its annual overflow, or rather it has two in each year, but the spring-floods are much the most considerable. The St. Lawrence, owing to the vast extent of the lakes which serve as a reservoir and feeder to it, always preserves the same level, the extreme range of its rise and fall being only about 20 inches. The St. Lawrence, from the beauty of its waters, from their prodigious volume, from the country which it waters, and from the groups of isles scattered over it, would be one of the first rivers in the world in the eyes of the artist, but in those of the merchant, it is of quite a secondary importance. Its transparent waters hardly hide the numerous rocks; the navigation is interrupted first by the Falls of Niagara, and after it leaves Lake Ontario by numerous rapids, cataracts, or rocks between that lake and Montreal, and none but an Indian or a French Canadian, would dare to descend these points in that portion of the river in a canoe; at several points, the most powerful steamer would be unable to make head against the current.

The spirit of emulation which has prevailed among the States of the Union, has extended to the British Provinces, to the English population, which, leaving the lower part of the river to the French, has occupied Upper Canada. The inhabitants of this Province have embraced the opinion, that if the chain of communication which is broken by the cataracts and rapids, could be made whole, much of the produce, which now finds its way to the Mississippi, or to the Pennsylvania and New York canals, would seek a more convenient vent by the St. Lawrence, and that the British manufactures would take the same route up the river, through the ports of Quebec and Montreal, to the Western States. One canal has, therefore, already been executed around the falls of the Niagara, which forms a communication between Lakes Erie and Ontario; the Welland canal is 28 miles in length, exclusive of 20 miles of slack-water navigation. It is navigable by lake-craft of 120 tons, and has cost 2,000,000 dollars, nearly the whole of which was furnished by the upper Province, Lower Canada and the mother country having contributed a very trifling sum.

Since that work has been completed, the river below Lake Ontario has been surveyed, and it has been found that the aggregate length of the points not passable by steamboats of ten feet draft is only 30 miles, pretty equally divided between the two provinces. Upper Canada, which contains hardly 250,000 inhabitants, with no large towns and with little capital, has begun her portion of the work along the rapids within her limits. This work will be large enough to admit the passage of steamboats drawing nine feet water, and of the burden of 500 tons. I saw the labourers at work along the Long Saut Rapids at Cornwall, where there will be a cut of 13 miles in length; the estimated cost of this section is 1,250,000 dollars. The French population of Lower Canada, swallowed up in political quarrels, the result of which cannot be foreseen, neglects its essential interests in pursuit of the imaginary interests of national pride. It has done nothing towards continuing, within its limits, the great work, which has been begun by the poorer province of Upper Canada.

SECT. III. LINES OF COMMUNICATION ALONG THE ATLANTIC.

FIRST LINE. INLAND CHANNELS BY THE SOUNDS AND BAYS ALONG THE ATLANTIC.

Upon examining the coast of the United States from Boston to Florida, it will be seen that there is almost a continuous line of inland navigation, extending from northeast to southwest in a direction parallel to that of the coast, formed, in the north by a series of bays and rivers, and in the south, by a number of long sounds, or by the narrow passes between the mainland and the chain of low islands that lie in front of the former. The necks of land that separate these bays, rivers, and lagoons, are all flat and of inconsiderable breadth. From Providence (42 miles south of Boston) to New York are Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound, together 180 miles in length. Thence to reach to the Delaware you go to New Brunswick at the head of the Raritan Bay, where you encounter the New Jersey isthmus, a level tract, not more than 40 feet above the level of the sea, or than 35 to 40 miles in width. This neck is now cut across by the Raritan and Delaware Canal, a fine work, navigable by the small coasting craft, and 43 miles in length, exclusive of a navigable feeder 24 miles, all lately executed by a company, in less than three years, at a cost of about 2,500,000 dollars.[CB]

This canal terminates at Bordentown, on the Delaware. Hence the navigation is continued to Delaware City, 70 miles below Bordentown, and 40 below Philadelphia. There, the isthmus which divides the Delaware from the Chesapeake, is cut through by a canal, of which the summit level is only 12 feet above the surface of the sea; this is the Chesapeake and Delaware canal, like the last mentioned of dimensions suited to coasting vessels. The cost was very great, about 2,600,000 dollars; length 13 1-2 miles. Having entered the Chesapeake, the voyage may be continued to Norfolk about 200 miles. Thence, to the series of sounds and inland channels on the coast of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, extends the Dismal Swamp Canal, whose length is 20 miles, and whose summit level is only 10 feet above the level of the sea; this is also adapted for coasting vessels. The works intended to continue the navigation beyond the sounds connected with the Dismal Swamp canal, have not been completed, and to the south of the Chesapeake the line is, therefore, imperfect; but steamboats run from Charleston to Savannah, by the channels and lagoons between the mainland and the low islands which yield the famous long-staple cotton.

SECOND LINE. COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE NORTH AND SOUTH BY THE MARITIME CAPITALS.

Parallel to the preceding line which is designed for the transportation of bulky articles, is another further inland for the use of travellers, and the lighter and more valuable merchandise, on which steam is becoming the only motive power, both by land and by water; by land on railways, and by water in steamboats. You go from Boston to Providence by a railroad, 42 miles in length, which cost 1,500,000 dollars, or 33,000 dollars a mile. From Providence to New York, passengers are carried by the steamboats in from 14 to 18 hours; some boats have made the passage in 12 hours. In passing from Narragansett Bay to the Sound, it is necessary to double Point Judith, where there is commonly a rough sea, to avoid which a railway is now in progress from Providence to Stonington, a distance of 47 miles. A third railroad, of which the utility seems questionable (since the boats in the Sound move at the rate of 15 miles an hour), is projected from a point on Long Island opposite Stonington to Brooklyn, a distance of 88 miles.

Between New York and Philadelphia, you go by steamboat to South Amboy on Raritan Bay, 28 miles, whence a railroad extends across the peninsula to Bordentown, and down along the Delaware to Camden, opposite Philadelphia. In summer a steamboat is taken at Bordentown, but in winter the Delaware is frozen over, and the railway is then used through the whole distance to transport the crowd that is always going and coming between the commercial and financial capitals of the United States, between the great mart and the exchange of the Union, between the North and the South. An ice-boat lands the traveller in Philadelphia, a few minutes after he has left the cars at Camden. This railroad is 61 miles in length, and cost 2,300,000 dollars, or 38,000 dollars a mile. It has but one track most of the way. I met many persons at Philadelphia, who remembered having been two, and sometimes three long days on the road to New York; it is now an affair of seven hours, which will soon be reduced to six. Two railroads belonging to a different group, of which one is completed, and the other nearly so, will form, with the exception of an interval of several miles, a second line across the peninsula, from New York to Philadelphia. The one extends from Philadelphia to Trenton, 26 miles; the other from Jersey City, opposite New York to New Brunswick, 30 miles; if, therefore, rails were laid between New Brunswick and Trenton, a distance of 28 miles, over a perfectly level plain, the land communication between New York and Philadelphia would be complete; but the State of New Jersey has hitherto refused to authorise this connection, because it received a considerable sum from the Camden and Amboy company for the monopoly of the travel.[CC]

From Philadelphia to Baltimore, the route is continued by a steamboat to Newcastle, and a railroad from thence to Frenchtown, across the peninsula, 16 1-4 miles long, whence another steamboat takes the traveller to Baltimore, in 8 or 9 hours after starting from Philadelphia. The Newcastle and Frenchtown railroad cost 400,000 dollars, or 24,500 dollars a mile. The navigation of the Chesapeake and Delaware is sometimes interrupted by ice, and it has, therefore, been thought that it would be useful to have a continuous railroad from Philadelphia; there would also be a saving of time, for the present route is somewhat circuitous. Different companies have undertaken different portions of this work, which will pass by Wilmington and Havre de Grace, at the mouth of the Susquehanna.

The whole distance by this route is only 93 miles, instead of 118, the distance by the present line, and the passage will occupy five or six hours, instead of eight or nine. From Baltimore southwardly two routes offer themselves; you may take the steamboat to Norfolk, a distance of 200 miles, which is accomplished in 18 or 20 hours, whence another boat ascends the James River to Richmond still more rapidly, the distance of about 135 miles being passed over in 10 hours; or you may go from Norfolk to Weldon on the Roanoke by a railroad 77 miles in length, of which two thirds are completed.[CD]

From Baltimore you may also go to Washington, by a branch of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and thence by steamboat down the Potomac to a little village, 15 miles from Fredericksburg, from which a railroad is now in progress to Richmond. It will be 58 miles in length, and will cost but 12,000 dollars a mile, including the engines, cars, and depots. From Petersburg, 20 miles from Richmond, a railroad extends to Blakely on the Roanoke, 60 miles, and the interval between Petersburg and Richmond will soon be filled up. The Petersburg and Roanoke railroad, which is shorter than the post-road, follows with very little deviation an old Indian trail, a remarkable fact, which was told me by the able engineer Mr Moncure Robinson. It extends, almost entirely on the surface of the ground and without embankments, through the sandy, uncultivated plains, intersected by pools of stagnant water, which uniformly border the sea from the Chesapeake to Cape Florida, and are annually infested by the fever of the country. The whole region is most admirably adapted for railroads, which are constructed almost wholly of wood. The surface is graded by nature, and the sandy soil offers an excellent foundation for the wooden frame on which the rails are placed. The still virgin forests, consisting of pine and oak, afford an inexhaustible supply of timber for the construction of the railways, free to whoever wishes to use it. But if the nature of the country is well suited to this object, the condition of the population is far from being so. In this sterile tract, the inhabitants are thinly scattered over the surface, and there are only a few villages here and there on the rivers. Large towns, in which alone the necessary capital would be found, do not exist, and the aid of Northern capitalists has been necessarily resorted to. Philadelphia capital has been largely employed in the construction of the Petersburg and Richmond railroads, and without it, the great line between the South and the North, will not be continued across North Carolina, one of the poorest States in the confederacy, and connected with the works completed or in progress in Georgia and South Carolina.

There is, therefore, a great void of 325 miles, between the Roanoke and Charleston, the chief city of South Carolina, or rather of 275 miles between the Roanoke and Columbia, the capital of that State.[CE] From Charleston, a railroad 136 miles in length, extends through the uncultivated and feverish zone of sand and pine-barrens to the cotton-region; it terminates at Hamburg, on the River Savannah, opposite Augusta, which is the principal interior cotton-market; the cost of this work was only about 9,500 dollars a mile including some cars, &c. Its construction is peculiar in this respect, that where its level is above that of the surface, recourse has been had to piles instead of embankments; the railway, thus perched upon stilts from 15 to 25 feet high, certainly leaves something to be desired in regard to the safety of travellers, but it was necessary to construct it, and to do so with a very small capital, and in this respect it has been successful. The receipts have already been sufficiently large to permit the company gradually to substitute embankments of earth for the frail props on which it formerly rested. Another singular circumstance about it is, that it was constructed almost entirely by slaves. This road was undertaken with the purpose of diverting the cotton, which descended the river Savannah to the town of the same name, from that place to Charleston, and it has fully answered the expectations of its projectors.

From Augusta, the Georgia railroad has lately been begun, and will traverse some of the most fertile cotton districts in the State; it will extend to Athens, a distance of 115 miles. To continue the line from North to South, or from Boston to New Orleans, it would be necessary that this railroad should be prolonged in the direction of Montgomery, Alabama, whence a steamer takes the traveller to Mobile, on the River Alabama.[CF] Between Mobile and New Orleans, there are regular lines of steamboats running through Mobile Bay, Pascagoula Sound, and Lakes Borgne and Pontchartain. The four last miles, between the latter lake and New Orleans, are passed over in a quarter of an hour on a railroad, which the Louisiana legislature calls in its bad French _chemin à coulisses_. Such is the line between the North and South, of which the execution is the most advanced; it will not be the only one, but as civilisation establishes itself further west and capital multiplies, several new routes will be formed, receding more and more from the coast.

The Baltimore and Ohio railroad is connected at Harper's Ferry with the Winchester railroad, 30 miles in length, which runs up the bed of one of those long valleys that separate the successive ridges of the Alleghany Mountains from each other. That in which Winchester stands, is one of the most regular and fertile of these great basins, and is celebrated under the name of the Virginia Valley. Although, therefore, the Winchester railroad was constructed only for the purpose of giving the produce of Winchester and its vicinity an easy access to the market of Baltimore, yet it may one day become a link in the great chain of communication extending through the Valley from north to south. A company has already been chartered for continuing the work to Staunton, a distance of 96 miles. Another line from the South to the North, which will, perhaps, be connected with that of the great Valley, has been projected at New Orleans, and authorised by the legislatures of Louisiana and the other States through which it will pass; it is a railroad from New Orleans to Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, and I am assured that the work will soon be commenced. This line aspires to nothing less than a competition with the magnificent river lines of the Ohio and the Mississippi, in the transportation of passengers and cotton.

SECT. IV. LINES RADIATING AROUND THE LARGE TOWNS.

FIRST CENTRE. BOSTON.

Three railroads extend from Boston in different directions; the first, 26 miles in length, to the manufacturing city of Lowell, which is thus become a suburb of Boston, and the second, 44 miles in length, to Worcester, the centre of an important agricultural district. The former cost 60,000 dollars a mile, the latter 32,000. The third road is the Providence railroad, already mentioned above as one of the links in the great chain from north to south. The Lowell railroad enters into competition with the Middlesex canal; the Worcester road is to be continued to the River Hudson, where it will terminate opposite Albany. It will also be connected with the city of Hudson, 30 miles below Albany, by a railroad extending from West Stockbridge. It will thus become to Boston a Western Railroad, which name it has in fact received. A company has been authorised to execute the portion between Worcester and Springfield, a distance of 54 miles, the whole distance from Boston to Albany being 160 miles.[CG] The Eastern railroad, a fourth work is about to be undertaken, passing through Lynn, famous for its boots and shoes. Salem, a little city which carries on an extensive trade with China, Ipswich, Beverly, and Newburyport towards Portland, the principal town in the northern extremity of the Union.

SECOND CENTRE. NEW YORK.

Radiating from New York are, 1. The railroad to Paterson, an important manufacturing town at the falls of the Passaic, 16 miles in length; 2. The New Brunswick railroad already mentioned, which serves as a route of communication with several important points, especially Newark, and for the transportation of provisions for the New York market from a portion of New Jersey; 3. The Harlæm railroad, almost exclusively for passengers; and 4. The Brooklyn and Jamaica railroad, on Long Island, 12 miles in length, and designed both for pleasure excursions, and for transporting articles of consumption to the markets of New York.[CH]

THIRD CENTRE. PHILADELPHIA.

Around Philadelphia, in addition to the great works extending to Columbia, Amboy, and Baltimore, already mentioned, are 1. The Trenton railroad; 2. The Norristown and Germantown road, designed for passengers and for the accommodation of some manufacturing villages, such as Manayunk, 16 miles in length; and 3. That of West Chester, a branch of the Columbia railroad, 9 miles in length, designed for the supply of the markets of the city. There are also several railroads running through the city, of which the rails are laid on the level of the street, and on which horse-cars only are used.

FOURTH CENTRE. BALTIMORE.

Beside the Baltimore and Ohio railroad with its Washington branch, Baltimore is also about to have a railroad through York, to the Susquehanna, opposite to Columbia, the length of which will be 73 miles. The object of this road is to contest with Philadelphia the commerce of the valley of the Susquehanna. The Pennsylvania canal with its various branches forms a canalisation of this river and its tributaries above Columbia. But below Columbia, there are several rapids and shoals which interrupt the navigation of the river, except for downward-bound boats in the highest stages of the water. The Philadelphia merchants, fearing that all the works executed at a great expense by Pennsylvania, would turn out much less advantageously for them than for the Baltimoreans, as these last have, indeed, openly boasted, opposed for a long time both the canalisation of the Susquehanna from Columbia to its mouth, and the permission to construct that section of a railroad from Baltimore to Columbia, which would lie within the limits of Pennsylvania. Their opposition has, however, been at last overcome, and charters have been granted authorising the construction of both works. The railroad company, to which Maryland has just made a loan of 1,000,000 dollars, is pushing on the railway with great activity.

FIFTH CENTRE. CHARLESTON.

Some short canals have been cut to facilitate the access to Charleston from the interior, but they are in a bad state, and are of little importance.

SIXTH CENTRE. NEW ORLEANS.

Independently of the short railway of five miles from Lake Pontchartain to New Orleans, there are several other works, such as the Carrolton railroad, which is a little longer, and two short canals extending from the city to the lake. Some cuts have also been made between the lagoons and marshes of the lower Mississippi. These canals, dug in a wet and muddy soil, have presented serious difficulties in their construction; but they are of no interest in regard to extent or importance.

SEVENTH CENTRE. SARATOGA.

Saratoga Springs in New York are visited for two or three months in the summer, by crowds of persons who throng thither in shoals. There is not a master of a family of Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore, in easy circumstances, who does not feel obliged to pass 24 or 48 hours with his wife and daughters, amidst this crowd in their Sunday's best, and to visit the field where the English army under General Burgoyne surrendered its arms. There are at present two railroads to Saratoga; one from Schenectady, 22 miles in length, a branch of the Albany and Schenectady road, and another from Troy on the Hudson, 25 miles in length. After the season is over they serve for the transportation of fuel and timber.