.24 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



ways twelve other great roads were projected, and more or 

 less work was done towards their completion. A road was 

 authorized from Georgia to Louisiana, and another from Nash- 

 ville to Natchez, Mississippi. In the course of the thirty 

 years following 1806 $1,600,000 was appropriated for road- 

 making purposes, of which sum Florida got $200,000; $286,- 

 ooo was expended for a road from Chicago to Detroit, and 

 $206,000 was used for building a road from Memphis to the 

 St. Francis River in Arkansas. 



Equally with the building of highways, the construction 

 of navigable canals engaged the attention of the early states- 

 men of the Republic. They saw clearly that the only means 

 of carrying on a profitable and popular trade over the mag- 

 nificent distances of the United States the only means of 

 securing prosperity to her prospective population, and of 

 binding all securely into a permanent political unity was the 

 opening up of navigation by means of natural and artificial 

 waterways throughout the length and breadth of the land. 

 Toward this end Nature had done much. The Great Lakes 

 placed an immense territory within navigable reach of the 

 States bordering on the coast. The Alabama, the Chatta- 

 hoochee, the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, the Mis- 

 sissippi and many smaller rivers offered themselves for the 

 bearing of a mighty freightage from state to state, and from 

 interior points to the gulf and to the sea. The plan of the 

 people, as expressed by their leaders, was to connect all these 

 natural facilities by artificial means, and thus cover the land 

 with a network of navigable communication. The carrying 

 of freight by water was then, as it still is, incomparably the 

 cheapest form of transport known. It was a magnificent 

 dream. 



