cxciv GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



The Fort Philip Canal, an enterprise projected during the 

 last year, is a scheme providing for a canal two hundred feet 

 wide at bottom, and twenty-five feet deep, to form a perma- 

 nent highway from the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. 

 The work, it is proposed, shall be constructed by the United 

 States, and when completed shall be free to all nations. The 

 proposed canal is to extend a distance of six and a half miles 

 from the left bank of the river below Fort St. Philip, to a 

 point four miles south of Breton Island. Its advocates claim 

 that the construction of such a canal w r ould effect the desid- 

 eratum of keeping the channel of the great river constantly 

 open. A plan for the same purpose, originated by Captain 

 Eads, was rejected by the last Congress. It proposed the 

 building of jetties upon each side of the stream, and thus, by 

 narrowing the channel, create a swifter current, which would 

 deepen itself by scouring, and effect the removal of its sedi- 

 ment farther out to sea. 



Another project of like character was lately brought be- 

 fore the Legislature of New York, namely, the construction 

 of a navigable water-way between Troy and Lake Champlain. 

 The plan includes the deepening of the Hudson River from 

 Troy to Fort Edward, and the excavation of a canal from 

 the latter point to Whitehall, on the lake. Its object is to 

 increase the facilities of New York to command the com- 

 merce of the West. 



A project of similar intent, the James River and Kanawha 

 Canal, to connect the James and Ohio Rivers, claiming to 

 possess extraordinary advantages as a measure of relief to 

 the West, in producing a great highway for the cheap trans- 

 portation of its bulky productions to market, and for fos- 

 tering commerce in general, has been made, during the 

 past year, the subject of a favorable report by General 

 A. A. Humphreys, United States Army. Since the aban- 

 donment of the Cheeseborough Tunnel beneath the Detroit 

 River in 1873, a number of tunnel and bridge projects have 

 been mooted, but thus far to no purpose. In this connec- 

 tion, w T e may add that during the past year a commission, 

 appointed by the Secretary of War to inquire into the prac- 

 ticability of bridging the river, reported in favor of a tunnel 

 as the only unobjectionable mode of meeting the necessities 

 of the case. 



