40 THE HISTORY AND ECONOMIC VALUE OF CANALS. 



power to land transportation. Naturally the new and more mobile form 

 of transit supplanted the slower one; the craze for railroads exceeded 

 that for canals. The capitalist of the east sought profit in the growing- 

 west. The farmer, lured by the rich soil of the Mississippi valley, aban- 

 doned his New England home. The prairie schooner took tlie place of 

 the coasting craft. The spirit, taught in the rugged school of the ocean, 

 was transferred to the "conquering of a continent." The Atlantic coast 

 lost temporarily its sea power, and New England, through the upbuilding 

 of the interior, its vast marine possibilities, which up to that period she 

 had continuously fostered. 



III. 



Chief among these possibilities was the betterment of the network 

 of sounds and bays which line the shore from New York to Nova Scotia. 

 Perhaps the most interesting marine locality is the great right arm of 

 Massachusetts known as Cape Cod, interesting from an historic and 

 patriotic point of view, ever since the landing of the Pilgrim fathers. Discov- 

 ered by Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602, a Frenchman named DeMonts real- 

 ized its dangerous shoals when, three years later, he named it "Malebarre." 



From that date to this. Cape Cod has sent forth men whose names 

 have been famous in all walks of life, while the county records of to-da^' 

 show a purer Pilgrim strain of blood than anywhere else is to be found. 

 There the Bacons, Cushings, Otises, Tuppers, Bournes, Nyes, Crockers 

 and Keiths lived and still live. There engineers and naval officers sur- 

 veyed. Collins there thought out the establishment of the first American 

 line of steamers, while Webster, Cleveland, and Joe Jefl'erson lived there 

 and fished in the neighboring streams. 



During three centuries a canal has been advocated across tlie narrow 

 sandy isthmus separating Barnstable from Buzzards Bay. As early as 

 1697, a committee was appointed to view the place, "it being thought by 

 many persons very necessary for the preservation of men and estates" 

 that the passage should be cut. 



In 1776 Washington and the Revolutionary Council sent James Bowdoin 

 and Machin there to see if a way by water could be found to avoid the enemy 

 and the hazardous navigation around the Cape. 



In 1780 General Knox made an estimate for a canal; then followed 

 in 1791 the surveys of Winthrop and Hill, and in 1808 the report from 

 Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury. The names of Thorndike, Perkins and 

 Loami Baldwin were associated with the project in 1881. Subsequent 



