Lake Erie. By canals we have opened a navigation between Philadelphia and New-York, mingling the waters of the Delaware with those of the Raritan. By canals we have given access from two several ports on the Hudson to two different coal-fields in Pennsylvania. By canals we have also extended the navigation of the Hudson, through Lake Champlain and its outlet, to the St. Lawrence near Montreal. We are just opening a channel from the Hudson to Lake Ontario, at Cape Vincent, near its eastern termination, while we long since opened one from the same river to a central harbor on that lake at Oswego. A corresponding improvement, made by the Canadian authorities on the opposite shore, prolongs our navigation from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. We have also connected the Hudson river with the eastern branch of the Susquehanna, through the valley of the Chenango, and again with its western tributaries through the Seneca Lake. We are also uniting the Hudson with the Alleghany, a tributary of the Mississippi, through the valley of the Genesee. One long trunk of canal receives the trade gathered by most of these tributary channels, while it directly unites the Hudson with Lake Erie at Buffalo. The shores of that great lake are the basis of a second part of the same system. Canals connect the Alleghany, in the State of Pennsylvania, with Lake Erie at Erie; the Ohio river, at Portage and at Cincinnati, with Lake Erie, at Cleveland and at Toledo; and again the Ohio river, in the State of Indiana, with Lake Erie, through the valley of the Wabash. Lake Superior, hitherto secluded from even internal commerce, is now being connected with the other great lakes by the canal of the Falls of St. Mary; and, to complete the whole, the Illinois canal unites the lakes and all the extensive system I have described, with the Mississippi. Thus, by substituting works purely artificial, we have not only dispensed with the navigation of the St. Lawrence, but have also opened a complete circuit of inland navigation and traffic between New-Orleans, on the Gulf, and New-York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, on the Atlantic. The aggregate length of these canals is five thousand miles, and that of the inland coasts thus washed by natural and artificial channels exceeds twenty thousand miles.
Railroads constitute an auxiliary system of improvements, at once
