116 INTRODUCTION. 



section of the canal, and the probabiUty of its rapid increase, announced to the 

 legislature that it would be necessary before long to exclude passenger boats 

 from this part of the line, unless double locks were made through the whole 

 distance, and remarked that even then the crowd of boats in the spring and fall 

 would produce great inconvenience and delay. Reasoning that in many places it 

 would be almost impossible to construct double locks, and that in others it would 

 be attended with great expense, they inferred that in a very few years it would 

 be proper and perhaps indispensable to make a parallel canal along the valley of 

 the Mohawk. They showed, that in 1820 the tolls on ninety-four miles of the 

 Erie canal were $5,000 ; in 1821, on the same distance, $23,000 ; in 1822, on one 

 hundred and sixteen miles, $57,000 ; in 1823, on one hundred and sixty miles, 

 $105,000 ; and in 1824, on two hundred and eighty miles, had reached the sum 

 of $294,000. They submitted tables, in which they estimated the tolls on a 

 basis of the increase of population, and the progress of agricultural improvement, 

 and predicted that in 1836 two milUons of people would be within the influence 

 of the Erie canal ; that its tolls would in that year reach the sum of one million 

 of dollars ; and that, if the rates should not be reduced, they would amount in 

 1846, to two millions of dollars, and in 1856, to four millions. 



At this session, Samuel Dexter junior introduced a bill into the assembly for 

 exploring a route to connect the waters of the Black river with the Erie canal ; 

 Jacob Adrian Van Der Heuvel brought in a bill to construct a canal from Pots- 

 dam, in St. Lawrence, to the Oswegatchie, and to improve the navigation of that 

 river ; and Thurlow Weed proposed a survey with a view to connect the Allegany 

 river at Olean with the Erie canal at Rochester, by a navigable communication 

 through the valley of the Genesee river. Laws were passed at the same session, 

 authorizing the construction of the Cayuga and Seneca canal, adopting the 

 Oswego canal as a state work, and providing for surveys for most of the other 

 improvements recommended by the governor ; and the legislature, in view of the 

 approaching completion of the main arteries of the system of inland navigation, 

 directed that all the laws, reports and documents relative to the canals, requisite 



