o30 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



yet linger upon their summit, slowly dissolving in the sun. and trickling 

 down their sides in a thousand rills, which are gathered into artificial 

 channels upon the plains below. He now discovers how it is that a 

 hundred thousand Mormons, by tireless industry, in a country where 

 rain seldom falls, have produced the most blooming and beautiful agri- 

 culture west of the Mississippi River. It is done by the process of 

 irrigation. 



THE SUEZ CANAL. 



The world is full of enterprise for material development on the 

 grandest scale, and what I have referred to as needed in California are 

 not more than commensui'ate with our resources and our destiny. We 

 see, for example, the Suez Canal, now being urged forward by the 

 French engineer, Lesseps, and the contractor, Levaliier. That is indeed a 

 great undertaking. It is nothing less than the connecting of the Medi- 

 terranean and Red Seas by a canal which is in itself almost a sea, for it 

 is one hundred miles in length, three hundred feet in width, thirty-five 

 in depth, and is nowhere crossed by any bridge or interrupted by locks. 

 To urge on this work, twenty thousand workmen ply their implements, 

 and forty steam engines strain at the vast weights of earth raised along 

 its bed. Fourteen years these tremendous forces of men and machinery 

 have been employed, and this year Europe, Asia and Africa are to unite 

 in celebrating its completion. It cost eighty millions of dollars, and 

 forms part of the route which will compete with our trans-continental 

 route for the carrying of merchandise from the ports of China to Lon- 

 don and New York. Had Sir John Franklin lived at this day, his precious 

 life would not have been imperilled to realize the traditionally dream of 

 a northwest passage to India. Two routes now lie open to Indian com- 

 merce — the eastern by Suez, and the western by our trans-continental 

 railroad — either of which is infinitely preferable to a route through polar 

 seas, open at best but two months in the year, and even then liable to 

 be impeded by fields of floating ice. 



THE DARIEN CANAL. 



Far to the southward of us lies that narrow neck of land, the Isthmus 

 of Darien, the scene of one of the greatest of human enterprises, thought 

 of but not accomplished. It is the opening of a ship canal across that 

 Isthmus to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 



LAKE MICHIGAN AND MISSISSIPPI CANAL. 



While Ave are pausing before obstacles in the way of this work, behold 

 towards the north, rising in vast conception before the mind, the 

 monster project of a ship canal from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi 

 River, which is nothing: less than the union of the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 ■with the Gulf of Mexico. When that is built, a steamer can go from St. 

 Johns (New Brunswick), westward in a continuous inland sea, iar 

 through the Canadas and the Western States of our Union, past Chicago. 

 on into the Mississippi, down that river, swollen above the risk of insuffi- 

 cient depth by the surplus of waters that now roar usek-ssl}' around the 

 stormy coasts of Labrador; on and on, till it reaches New Orleans. 

 For eighty-five millions of dollars it is estimated that this canal can be 

 built, and to a depth of sixty feet in eight years. But if the depth be 

 reduced to thirty-five feet, Av'hich is the depth of the grand canal at Suez. 



