The Illinois and Michigan rail-road is to commence at Chicago, on lake Michigan, and continue in a south-westerly direction eleven and a half miles to the summit level: in this distance the ascent is only twenty-five feet. After passing the summit level, it is to cross and continue along the river Des Plaines, to the foot of the Illinois rapids, the distance of eighty-five miles, with a descent of exactly two feet a mile; thus giving, in a distance of ninety-six and a half miles, only one hundred and ninety-five feet of rise and fall. A company has been formed for the construction of a rail-road between Detroit and Pontiac, a distance of twenty-five miles. The Tuscumbia rail-road extends from Tuscumbia to Decatur. The Lake Pontchartrain rail-road extends from lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans four and a half miles. It consists of a single track, is perfectly straight and nearly level. A port of entry has been established on the lake, and an artificial harbor and breakwater have been constructed at the termination of the rail-road. The West Feliciana rail-road company was incorporated by the legislature of Louisiana, for the purpose of constructing arail-road from the river Mississippi, near St. Francisville, to the boundary line of Louisiana and Mississippi, in the direction of Woodville, Mississippi.
The materials for the history of rail-roads in the United States are now so scattered and uncertain, and the roads themselves are so rapidly changing their aspect, that it is in vain to hope for any thing like an authentic account, till all the great systems and chains are completed throughout the country. We have not attempted to give a description of all the rail-roads now in existence; besides those described, there are many completed and in progress in various parts of the Union, so that most of the principal cities are intimately connected, and internal communication is greatly facilitated. Nor is the spirit of rail-road enterprise at all abated; new routes are continually projected, and we trust that the time is not far distant when all parts of the Union will be thus connected, and the distance between the remote parts be as it were annihilated.
CHAPTER VII.—CANALS.
GREAT improvements have been introduced in the inland navigation of the United States within the last twenty years, both by removing impediments that have obstructed river navigation, and by the construction of canals. More than two thousand five hundred miles of canal have been constructed in the country, and numerous works of this description are now in progress, though the rail-road has perhaps, in most instances, been preferred, where the circumstances admitted of a choice. Our description of the principal canals in the country must be limited to a mere enumeration of the most important particulars.
CANALS IN NEW ENGLAND. The Cumberland and Oxford canal extends from Portland to Sebago pond, and was completed in 1829. Its length is twenty and a half miles; its width at the surface is thirty-four feet, at the bottom, eighteen; its depth is four feet.The number of its locks is twenty-six. A lock is also constructed in Songo river, by which navigation is continued into Brandy and Long ponds, making the whole natural and artificial water communication fifty miles.
Middlesex canal was completed in 1808, and opens a water communication between Boston and the central part of New Hampshire, by its junction with the Merrimack river. It has but one summit level, one hundred and four feet above Boston harbor, and thirty-two above the level of the Merrimack, at the place where it unites with that river in Chelmsford, above Pawtucket falls, on which are situated the great manufacturing establishments of Lowell. Its length is twenty-seven miles, breadth at the surface thirty feet, at the bottom twenty; its depth of water is three feet, and locks are twenty. It has seven aqueducts over streams and rivers, and fifty bridges, with stone abutments twenty feet apart. Around the numerous falls of the river, within the limits of New Hampshire, the following canals have been constructed:—Bow canal, completed in 1812, is one third of a mile long, and passes a fall of twenty-five feet with four locks; Hooksett canal, fifty rods in length, passes Hooksett falls by three locks, with a lockage of sixteen feet; Amoskeag canal, eight miles below the above, passes a fall of the same name, by a lockage of forty-five feet, with nine locks; Union canal, immediately below Amoskeag, overcomes seven falls in the river, and has seven locks in nine miles.
Pawtucket canal, in the town of Lowell, is used not only for passing a fall of the same name, but also for supplying very extensive hydraulic works. It is a mile and a half in length, ninety feet wide, and four feet deep, overcoming a difference of level of thirty-two feet.
In 1811, a charter, that has been subsequently renewed, was granted to a company for the purpose of constructing a canal from Winnipisiogee lake to Cocheco river, below the landing at Dover. The distance is twenty-seven miles. The waters of the lake are four hundred and fifty-two feet above the level of the river, and the fall would require fifty-three locks. The expense has been estimated at about three hundred thousand dollars.
The Blackstone canal extends from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island. It is forty-five miles long, and follows in the greater part of its course the valley of the Blackstone or Pawtucket river, from which it is supplied with water. Its fall from the summit at Worcester to tide water at Providence, is four hundred and fifty-one and six tenths feet. It has forty-eight locks, eighty feet long by ten wide; the breadth at its surface is thirty-four feet, at the bottom eighteen; depth of water, four feet. It was built by an incorporated company, under charter from the legislatures of the states in which it lies, at a cost of about six hundred thousand dollars. It was finished in the autumn of 1828. This canal facilitates and greatly increases the trade from the northern part of Rhode Island, and the central parts of Massachusetts, to the markets of Providence, New York, and the middle and southern states.