WATER AND COMMERCE 157 



and sailing vessels on the Great Lakes, but there was no 

 route by which freight vessels could pass between the Lakes 

 and the greater river systems. To meet these needs a number 

 of canals were dug. Erie Canal is the most widely known, 

 but there are others in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, 

 Ohio, Illinois, and other states. 



One of the canals was completed in 1848 and connects 

 Lake Michigan with the rivers of the Mississippi system. The 

 conditions which made it easy for the French and Indians to 

 get their canoes from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River by 

 way of the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers also made it easy 

 to dig a canal, known as the Illinois and Michigan Canal, 

 along the same line, for the divide between the two rivers is 

 at one place not more than fifteen feet higher than the lake. 

 The canal begins only a few miles from the old French and 

 Indian portage and extends along the valley of the Des Plaines 

 and Illinois rivers to La Salle, Illinois, where it enters the 

 Illinois River. Thus the route used by the Indians for many 

 centuries became the route of modern commerce, and the fort 

 became a great city. 



171. Railroads. Soon railroads were built in the same 

 region, and then the canal became less important, but two of 

 the railroads were built along the same old route of early 

 Indian travel. In the valley of the Des Plaines River, leading 

 southwest, there are the river, the old canal, two railroads, 

 a wagon road, a trolley line, and the sanitary-drainage canal. 



At the end of the lake was the only harbor in this vicinity 

 where freight might be transferred between train and ship. 

 The lake extends so far south that railways built westward 

 from the larger cities of the East toward the rich prairies of 

 the West found their shortest route close to the end of the 

 lake. Thus the settlement on the main line of pioneer travel 

 came to be on the main line of railway travel. 



Elsewhere upon the shores of lakes, rivers, and ocean the 

 towns which were originally centers of commerce by water 



