96 INTRODUCTION. 



the cultivation of the most remote parts of the country — that they created new- 

 sources of internal trade, and augmented the old channels, thus tending to en- 

 large old and erect new towns, increase individual and aggregate wealth, and 

 extend foreign commerce. The memorialists attributed the prosperity of ancient 

 Egypt and China to their inland navigation, and expressed the opinion that 

 England and Holland, if deprived of their canals, would lose the most prolific 

 sources of their prosperity and greatness. Inland navigation, they said, was to 

 the same community what exterior navigation was to the great family of man- 

 kind ; and that as the ocean connected the nations of the earth by the ties of 

 commerce and the benefits of communication, so did lakes, rivers and canals 

 operate upon the inhabitants of the same country. Applying these general argu- 

 ments in favor of inland navigation, they showed that a great chain of mountains 

 passed through the territory of the United States, and divided it into eastern and 

 western America ; that the former, on account of the priority of its settlement, its 

 vicinity to the ocean, and its favorable position for commerce, had many advantages, 

 while the latter had a decided superiority in the fertility of its soil, the benignity 

 of its climate, and the extent of its territory ; that to connect these great sections 

 by inland navigation, to unite our Mediterranean seas with the ocean, was evi- 

 dently an object of the first importance to the general prosperity ; that the 

 Hudson river offered superior advantages for effecting this connection, because 

 it afforded a tide navigation through the Blue ridge or eastern chain of moun- 

 tains, and ascended above the eastern termination of the Catskill or great western 

 chain, and that no mountains interposed between it and the great western lakes, 

 while the tide in no other river or bay in the United States ascended higher than 

 the Granite ridge, or within thirty miles of the Blue ridge. After showing the 

 importance of the Hudson as a natural channel of trade, one hundred and seventy 

 miles in length, the petitioners showed that the canal would be virtually an exten- 

 sion of that channel three hundred miles through a fertile country, embracing a 

 great population, and abounding with all the productions of industry ; and they 

 asked, if the work was so important when viewed in relation to this state alone, 



