FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 375 



study in hand, it was finally left undrawn, the water surface of the lake remaining 

 during the whole summer and fall of 1897 at about the crest of the original 

 timber dam, or at about twelve feet above extreme low water. In spite, however, of 

 the water not being drawn there was a great deal of sickness in the vicinity of Indian 

 Lake in the fall of 1897, diphtheria especially attacking a large number of children. 

 Certainly had the water actually been drawn, as originally proposed, no amount of 

 argument would have availed to show that the drawing of the water was not 

 responsible for the disease. 



WHY NEW YORK IS THE EMPIRE STATE. 



New York State is pre-eminent in position by virtue of being the only State 

 resting on the ocean and at the same time well grounded on Great Lakes. From 

 time immemorial Mohawk Valley has been the highway of commerce between the East 

 and the West. If the proposed deep waterway connecting Great Lakes with the 

 ocean is ever constructed, nature has, from the very beginning, predetermined two 

 possible routes, both of which pass through the State of New York; one by way of 

 Oswego-Mohawk valleys to tidewater, and the other by way of St. Lawrence- 

 Champlain- Hudson valleys to tidewater. The former of these routes — that through 

 Mohawk Valley — was the pathway from the East to the West when the white man 

 first came. Here the Iroquois warriors journeyed back and forth, and here, where the 

 Dutch patroons built with the fur trade the early beginnings of what is now a vast 

 interstate commerce, is the great highway of to-day. At Rome, the highest point 

 on the divide between Mohawk River and Great Lakes drainage, the surface of the 

 ground is only 425 feet above tidewater. This is the lowest pass from Adirondacks 

 to Alabama; all other lines of communication rise to much higher altitudes than this. 

 Hence it was inevitable that New York State, by virtue of position alone, should 

 become a great manufacturing State, and it is, therefore, strange that, with its vast 

 water powers, manufacturing business should not have developed here far in excess of 

 any other State. Let us see why the great water powers, indispensable to the devel- 

 opment of great manufacturing interests, happen to be located on the direct line of 

 greatest commercial activity. 



The explanation is partly geological and partly topographical ; or, if we consider 

 topography as an outcome of geology, then the explanation is all geological. 



THREE MAIN WATER CENTRES. 



If we examine a contour map of the State, we easily observe that there are three 

 high points or water centres, from which the water flows in all directions. The larger 

 and most important of these is the elevated region known as Adirondacks, the highest 



