170 Mineral and Agricultural Resources of JVew York. [Oct., 



expended in certain channels. It is true individuals embark frcra 

 choice, yet there is a sense in which there is a controlling power 

 in the structure and formation of the country which effecfually 

 moves great classes of men in a given direction. New channels 

 of industry are opened by almost every discovery, the extent of 

 which can never be perceived at the moment it is made. A ma- 

 terial ^yhen first known may be useless, though abundant, and its 

 value comes to light only in the progress of discovery. This, 

 however, when once disclosed, becomes a new element of wealth, 

 a new road opened for the industry of classes of men, who are 

 ever afterwards subordinated to a sphere in life which was created 

 in the original constitution of the earth's surface. 



The great depressions in the earth's crust are basins for the re- 

 ception and accumulation of bodies of water; the valleys lead 

 from them, and diver^in^; in all directions toward the elevated 

 regions, become the channels of supply to the waste occasioned by 

 evaporation; and upon these too we may travel and transport all 

 the materials which constitute its productions. In all this com- 

 merce is created and made one of the great pursuits of men. The 

 valleys and gentle slopes create husbandry, and rural occupations. 

 To compel the same to change and push their labors in a new 

 channel, we have only to place them in different formations. 



The linear depression forming the Mohawk valley, and making 

 a channel of communication east and west for more than three 

 hundred miles, and connecting itself with the great lakes, and at 

 the same time with another north and south depression, in which 

 the Hudson river and lake Champlain are not only situated, but 

 form as it were continuous links of a single chain, and whose ex- 

 tremities join two distant points of the great Atlantic basin, not 

 only makes the state of New York what she is, but has created a 

 commercial metropolis of the Union, and has contributed greatly 

 to the prosperity of the New England and Middle States. Even 

 the great west feels the advantages of the physical structure of 

 New York. A barrier at Little Falls, or the Highlands, and the 

 city of New York would never have become greater than a city 

 of the third or fourth class of dimensions. 



