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INTRODUCTION. 
section of the canal, and the probability of its rapid increase, announced to the 
legislature that it would be necessary before long to exclude passenger boats 
from this part of the line, unless double locks were made through the whole 
distance, and remarked that even then the crowd of boats in the spring and fall 
would produce great inconvenience and delay. Reasoning that in many places it 
would be almost impossible to construct double locks, and that in others it would 
be attended with great expense, they inferred that in a very few years it would 
be proper and perhaps indispensable to make a parallel canal along the valley of 
the Mohawk. They showed, that in 1820 the tolls on ninety-four miles of the 
Erie canal were $5,000 ; in 1821, on the same distance, $23,000 ; in 1822, on one 
hundred and sixteen miles, $57,000; in 1823, on one hundred and sixty miles, 
$105,000 ; and in 1824, on two hundred and eighty miles, had reached the sum 
of $294,000. They submitted tables, in which they estimated the tolls on a 
basis of the increase of population, and the progress of agricultural improvement, 
and predicted that in 1836 two millions of people would be within the influence 
of the Erie canal; that its tolls would in that year reach the sum of one million 
of dollars; and that, if the rates should not be reduced, they would amount in 
1846, to two millions of dollars, and in 1856, to four millions. 
At this session, Samuel Dexter junior introduced a bill into the assembly for 
exploring a route to connect the waters of the Black river with the Erie canal; 
Jacob Adrian Van Der Heuvel brought in a bill to construct a canal from Pots¬ 
dam, in St. Lawrence, to the Oswegatchie, and to improve the navigation of that 
river; and Thurlow Weed proposed a survey with a view to connect the Allegany 
river at Olean with the Erie canal at Rochester, by a navigable communication 
through the valley of the Genesee river. Laws were passed at the same session, 
authorizing the construction of the Cayuga and Seneca canal, adopting the 
Oswego canal as a state work, and providing for surveys for most of the other 
improvements recommended by the governor ; and the legislature, in view of the 
approaching completion of the main arteries of the system of inland navigation, 
directed that all the laws, reports and documents relative to the canals, requisite 
