LOCOMOTION BY RIVER AND RAILWAY. 



1. No quarter of the globe presents a natural apparatus of 

 internal communication so stupendous as that which the 

 European settlers found at their disposal on the North American 

 continent. 



This immense tract, included between the Atlantic and the 

 Rocky Mountains on the east and west, the great chain of lakes 

 extending from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario on the north, 

 and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, is divided into two districts 

 by the ridge of the Alleghanies, which traverses it in a direction 

 north and south. The western division consists of the vast valley 

 drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries, a territory greater in 

 superficial extent than Western Europe. The eastern district 

 consists of that portion between the Alleghany ridge and the 

 Atlantic, falling towards the ocean and drained by innumerable 

 rivers, navigable for vessels of greater or less burthen, and run- 

 ning generally eastward. 



Provided with such means of water communication, it might 

 have been expected that a population thinly scattered over an area 

 so extensive, and engrossed by the exigencies of incipient agri- 

 culture, would have continued for ages contented with means of 

 transport afforded them on so vast a, scale, without having 

 recourse to the resources of art. 



It is, however, the character of man, and more especially of 

 Anglo-Saxon man, never to rest satisfied until he renders the gifts 

 of nature, however munificent, ten times more fruitful by his 

 industry and skill ; and it will be presently seen to what a pro- 

 digious extent the enterprise of the population of the United 

 States has improved these means of inland transport. 



I. CANAL NAVIGATION. 



2. The spectacle of a machinery of commerce so imposing in 

 magnitude and power, and so remarkably co-extensive with the 

 vastness, the fertility, and the mineral wealth of the territory of 

 which this emigrant people found themselves possessors, only pro- 

 voked their ambition to rival the enterprise of the parent country, 

 and to import and naturalise its improvements and its arts. Their 

 independence was scarcely established before the same resources of 

 art and science which ages had not been more than sufficient to 

 develop in Britain were invoked ; and a system of artificial com- 

 munication was undertaken, and finally executed, on the new 

 continent, for which, all things considered, there is no parallel 

 in the history of civilisation. 



Immediately after the acknowledgment of the independence of 

 the American colonies by England in 1783, several companies 

 were formed in the two principal states of the Union, those of 

 18 



