9^J On the Inland Navigation of 



dered as likely to be attended with the most important conse- 

 quences ; while the formation of channels by which it could 

 be readily conveyed to the markets, appeared to offer the most 

 advantageous prospects for a profitable investment of capital. 

 The coal of the vale of Wyoming may be conveyed by the 

 Susquehannah to the tide-waters of the Chesapeake Bay. But 

 that river does not at present permit an ascending naviga- 

 tion ; and the supply, although cheap, is limited to what can 

 be furnished by the species of vessel called in America arJcs. 

 These vessels, rudely built of hewn logs, are broken up at their 

 place of destination, and sold as timber, or even as fuel. If 

 by no means costly, the quantity of them that can be prepared 

 in a season is small. A similar attempt was made on the 

 waters of the Lehigh, to supply the city of Philadelphia, but was, 

 for the reason we have stated^ found inadequate to the demand. 



The Schuylkill navigation, described in the early part of 

 this paper, was undertaken to open a more certain com- 

 munication with these mines, and has been successful so far 

 as Philadelphia is concerned ; much coal has been shipped 

 by sea to New York. But as a great part of the coal field is 

 not more distant from the latter city than it is from the former, 

 and as New York is likely to be a much greater consumer of 

 this fuel, more direct modes of communication have been sought 

 between it and the mines. The only one that is likely to be 

 very speedily completed is the Delaware and Hudson canal ; 

 and such is the facility it will offer for the transportation of 

 coal, that the best estimates appear to prove, that it may be 

 delivered on the bank of the Hudson at so low a price, as not 

 only to supply the demand of the city of New York, but even 

 to supersede wood as fuel, in the very districts where it is now 

 cut for the market of that metropolis. Wood is in truth so 

 bulky, and requires so much labour to convey it to the place 

 where it is used, that the farmers of those parts of the country 

 to which coal can be carried by water, are already beginning to 

 purchase coal, and abandoning the cutting of the wood that 

 grows upon their own lands. 



The Delaware and Hudson canal, to which we now return, 

 was commenced at a period when the frauds and misrepresen- 

 tations that marked the era of joint stock companies in 



