96 INTRODUCTION. 
the cultivation of the most remote parts of the country —that they created new 
sources of internal trade, and augmented the old channels, thus tending to en- 
large old and erect new towns, increase individual and aggregate wealth, and 
extend foreign commerce. The memorialists attributed the prosperity of ancient 
Egypt and China to their inland navigation, and expressed the opinion that 
England and Holland, if deprived of their canals, would lose the most prolific 
sources of their prosperity and greatness. Inland navigation, they said, was to 
the same community what exterior navigation was to the great family of man- 
kind; and that as the ocean connected the nations of the earth by the ties of 
commerce and the benefits of communication, so did lakes, rivers and canals 
operate upon the inhabitants of the same country. Applying these general argu- 
ments in favor of inland navigation, they showed that a great chain of mountains 
passed through the territory of the United States, and divided it into eastern and 
western America; that the former, on account of the priority of its settlement, its 
vicinity to the ocean, and its favorable position for commerce, had many advantages, 
while the latter had a decided superiority in the fertility of its soil, the benignity 
of its climate, and the extent of its territory ; that to connect these great sections 
by inland navigation, to unite our Mediterranean seas with the ocean, was evi- 
dently an object of the first importance to the general prosperity; that the 
Hudson river offered superior advantages for effecting this connection, because 
it afforded a tide navigation through the Blue ridge or eastern chain of moun- 
tains, and ascended above the eastern termination of the Catskill or great western 
chain, and that no mountains interposed between it and the great western lakes, 
while the tide in no other river or bay in the United States ascended higher than 
the Granite ridge, or within thirty miles of the Blue ridge. After showing the 
importance of the Hudson as a natural channel of trade, one hundred and seventy 
miles in length, the petitioners showed that the canal would be virtually an exten- 
sion of that channel three hundred miles through a fertile country, embracing a 
great population, and abounding with all the productions of industry ; and they 
asked, if the work was so important when viewed in relation to this state alone, 
