82 INTRODUCTION. 
Mississippi, which were the most obvious channels, were held by foreign powers; 
and neither their enterprise nor the condition of their colonies favored the spirit 
of competition which had been awakened in the new republic. 
New-York furnished a navigation through the Hudson, one hundred and 
eighty miles from tide water, and facilities for constructing a continuous channel 
for inland navigation across an almost level isthmus, which separated the great 
eastern lakes from the valley through which that river poured its deep and 
ample volume into the ocean; an isthmus, which in its various width no where 
exceeded three hundred and sixty miles. 
The proximity of the great lakes to the valley of the Hudson, was understood 
at a very early period. Governor Burnet, in 1720, found the Six Nations receiv- 
ing from French traders by the way of Montreal, merchandise which had been 
carried there from Albany. The friendship of the Indians naturally followed 
this commerce. Burnet, with a view to detach the Iroquois from the French 
interest, caused a fort to be erected at Oswego, and trading houses to be built at 
the mouth of the Oswego river, “on account of its water communications, and 
for the facility of transportation between the lakes and Schenectady, there being 
but three portages in the whole route, and two of them very short.”* Dr. Cadwal- 
lader Colden, then surveyor-general of the province, addressed to governor Bur- 
net a memoir on the fur trade, which contained an account of the western rivers, 
portages and lakes, and in which we find this very bold suggestion: “ If one con- 
siders the great length of the river (the Mississippi), and its numerous branches, 
he must say, that by means of the river and the lakes, there is opened to his view 
such a scene of inland navigation as cannot be paralleled in any part of the 
world.”+ Kalm and Carver, early European travellers, were struck with the 
same peculiar features of our territory. Sir Henry Moore, governor in 1768, in 
a speech to the provincial assembly, noticed the difficulties of trade with the Iro- 
quois, in consequence of the obstructions in the navigation between Schenectady 
* DuNLaP, +C. D. Cotpen’s Memoir of N. Y. Canals, 
