PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 845 



being flanked by the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, fail to 

 secure the trade of the future, and dwindle to a third rate town ? 



To hold the trade already secured, and make sure of the future, 

 Kobert Morris' idea of an artificial river must be realized. The 

 navigation of the Erie canal must be made equal in capacity to the 

 obstructed capacity of the St. Lawrence. 



Facilities for transshipment, storage and handling the products 

 and merchandise of the country must be so complete and perfect 

 that this item of expense may be reduced to the lowest possible 

 minimum. 



I was born west of the mountains, and am but in the meridian 

 of life, yet have seen villages increase to cities — like Rochester, 

 Buflalo, Cincinnati and Chicago, the latter boasting its 250,000 

 inhabitants. I have seen the wilderness give place to fertile fields, 

 and their products, a free gift, feed the famishing children of the 

 mother island. I have seen a whole State cease in one year to be 

 the importer of its food, and become an exporter to the amount 

 of many millions. Ou the spot where, in 1855, I ate my lonely 

 meal, without a jjouse in sight, that self-same day, a twelfth month, 

 I dined in a village of 1,500 inhabitants, with all the luxuries of 

 an eastern city. 



In 1822, Andrew P. Tillman erected in the village Geneva, 

 Ontario Co., N. Y., a block of six brick stores, three stories high ; 

 it was the wonder of the western world, for its equal was not to 

 be witnessed between Albany and the Pacific. The year before, 

 the cost of transportation had been reduced from that point to this 

 oity from $100 per ton to $25 by the Mohawk Improvement Com- 

 pany. The Erie canal has since reduced it to $2 per ton. 



Since then what has the west become ? To what height of 

 prosperity has it reached ? What a glorious prospect looms up 

 before it. 



Through much tribulation Providence led an ancient and 

 oppressed people into the narrow hydrographical basins of the 

 Jordan, and the eastern slope of the Mediterranean. He has 

 opened a grander theatre for the evolution of the problems of 

 humanity, by leading our fathers into this goodly land. 



When the young giant of the west was in the gristle of its 

 youth, England felt its power at New Orleans, under the hero of 

 the 8th of January ; and though not yet consolidated into ;^ the 

 strength of manhood, under Sherman the knight of action and 

 impulse, and Grant, the knight of silence and work, the prol)lem 



