506 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
things, a human figure shooting lightning from his mouth upon the head of another 
who seems to be prostrated and stunned by it. 
The whole region tells of a civilization which was, in its day, far superior to 
that of the present, and nearly every day new discoveries are made by the hardy 
prospectors that would delight the archzologist’s heart. (CE 
SOME IN WWE KE MMS ClO LAIN YZ, 
AMERICA’S RIVER SYSTEM ARTIFICIALLY DEVELOPED. 
Has any fanciful person, with a commercial turn of mind, and with a deeper 
interest in the development of the great trade avenues which nature has marked 
out than in the highways constructed wholly by human art and mechanism, ever 
taken the trouble to imagine what the river system of America will be when 
perfected as it may be, and as it doubtless will be, when the lapse of centuries 
shall make this the populous country of the world and masterful in art, commerce, 
and all science ? 
To map out in fancy all the schemes which must seem not only feasible, 
but likely to be accomplished as time passes—unless a new motive power be 
discovered which shall vastly cheapen all present modes of transportation—cannot 
but seem Quixotic to the ordinary and unfanciful observer, while, in fact, their 
accomplishment would not embody a tithe of the extraordinary features that have 
been contained in the modern application of steam, and the utilization of many 
other recent expositions of science. Probably no fact was ever developed which 
long anterior to that development did not have its counterpart in fancy, and, 
therefore, no picture which plain natural law does not declare to be outside of 
the realms of the possible, should be thought an exaggeration—a mere vision, 
possessing no phase possible of fulfillment. 
If, therefore, any enthusiast be heard to prophecy that the United States— 
which will then doubtless include all of North America—will one day be traversed 
by steamships from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the lakes of British 
America, the great lakes, the eastern rivers, and the streams running down the 
western mountains of the Gulf, he should not be condemned as a fool or a 
visionary without a close examination of the map of North America, and without 
indulging in serious speculation as to what engineering, in its wonderful progress, 
is capable of accomplishing. 
Let such an enthusiast have full sway, and he will explain to his audience 
first how the rivers of the East may be utilized for steam navigation. New 
England has several rivers which might be improved so that navigation would be 
extended much farther into the interior than at this time. In New York the 
Hudson, with its broad expanse, rolls down from the beautiful lakes which lie 
