The plan, which had been cherished by Washington, of making a lateral canal along the Potomac which should one day be extended across the mountains to the Ohio, was resumed when New York had taught the country that it was now ripe for the boldest enterprises of this kind. John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States, favoured the project with all his might. At that time it was not a settled principle, that the Federal government had no right to engage in internal improvements. The old idea, which Washington had cherished, of making the political capital of the Union a great city, was not less to the taste of Mr Adams and his friends. It was, therefore, resolved to undertake the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and a company was incorporated for this purpose. Congress voted a subscription of 1,000,000 dollars; the city of Washington without commerce, without manufactures, with its population of 16,000 souls, subscribed the same sum; the other little cities of the Federal District, Georgetown and Alexandria, having both together a population of about 10,000, furnished a half million; Virginia contributed 250,000, and Maryland 500,000 dollars; and 600,000 dollars were raised by individual subscriptions. The work was begun July 4, 1828. Next year, by aid of a loan of 3,000,000 from Maryland, this great work will be carried to the coal-beds of Cumberland at the foot of the mountains; the length of this division is 185 miles, the estimated cost 8,500,000 dollars, or 46,000 dollars per mile. The execution is on a bold scale, and superior to that of the works before-mentioned; its dimensions exceed those generally adopted in the proportion of 3 to 2, which gives a larger section in the ratio of 9 to 4.
Fifth Line. James River and Kanawha Communication.
Virginia, formerly the first State in the confederacy, but now fallen to the fourth in rank, and already outstripped by Ohio, which was not in being during the war of Independence, is at length roused to action, and has determined to profit by the lessons, which have come to her from the North. A company, whose means consist of little more than the subscriptions of the State and of the capital, Richmond, is about to open a canal from the East to the West. James River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay, is navigable for vessels of 200 tons to the foot of the table-land, on which Richmond stands in so charming a situation. On the east of the mountains, the canal, starting from Richmond, will follow the course of James River, and on the West it will descend the Kanawha, one of the tributaries of the Ohio, to Charleston, at the head of steamboat navigation. The Alleghany crest will be passed by a railroad, 150 miles in length; the canal itself will be about 250 miles long.
South Carolina, stirred up by the example of Virginia, is engaged in a great railroad from Charleston to Cincinnati on the Ohio; and the surveys are at present actively going on. The people of Cincinnati are enthusiastically interested in this scheme.[BS] Georgia is also dreaming of a great railroad from the Savannah to the Mississippi, at Memphis; but this project has not assumed a substantial shape. North Carolina does nothing, and projects nothing. If she ever becomes rich, it will not be because she has seized fortune by the forelock, but because fortune has come to her bedside.[BT]
Sixth Line. Richelieu Canal.
The Canadians are constructing a canal which will form another communication between the East and the West, that is, between the Hudson and the St. Lawrence, between New York and Quebec. The great fissure, which forms so fine a bed for the Hudson between New York and Troy, does not end here, but stretches on towards the north to the St. Lawrence, constituting the basin of Lake Champlain, which is a long and narrow cavity in the midst of the mountains, and the bed of the River Richelieu. Between Lake Champlain and the Hudson, there is only a ridge 54 feet above the level of the former, and 134 above that of the latter. The River Richelieu, which issues from the northern end of the lake and flows into the St. Lawrence, is broken by rapids, and a lateral canal, 12 miles in length, and of sufficient dimensions to receive the lake-craft, will be opened here in the course of a year; the cost will be 350,000 dollars; the distance from New York to Quebec by the canals, rivers, and lakes, is 540 miles. The railroad from St. John, where the rapids of the Richelieu begin, to Laprairie, on the St. Lawrence, opposite to Montreal, a distance of 16 miles, effects for Montreal what the canal does for Quebec; it cost about 160,000 dollars, or 10,500 dollars per mile. The distance from Montreal to New York is 360 miles.
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.