ABANDONED CANALS 3°5 



flour moved in the direction of tide water. The total of tolls in the 

 last year of its official life was over 20,000 dollars. The story of the 

 coal moved is better told in the amount carried by the Cayuga and 

 Seneca Lakes Canal, and partly distributed by the Genesee Valley, which 

 was 400,000 tons, now reduced to a few boatloads to accommodate the 

 railroads and not the public. There could not possibly have been 

 serious loss to the state from the Genesee Valley Canal and yet it 

 passed the way of the other waterways. This canal offers the most 

 picturesque ruins. A railway runs along the bottom for a part of 

 the way. The remains of the works at Dansville have a kind of 

 melancholy grandeur; a sad evidence of the greed and folly of man. 



It is only a matter of time when the subsidary canals will be 

 rebuilt. With the increased value of material and labor, it will cost 

 hundreds of thousands while the original represented thousands. It 

 will not be a question of money. It will be an overmastering impulse 

 to equal the best in canal structure. France, Germany, Belgium, 

 Holland will be the criteria. There appears every prospect that the 

 roads will take their normal place as freight carriers. 



It is planned to build a canal from the great lakes to Pittsburg, 

 thence to the Gulf. Such a waterway, if constructed with a view of 

 paying interest on the investment, will never be built. As a check to 

 the greed of the railways, as a plan to place them in normal accord 

 with the transportation interests of the country, it will prove an un- 

 alloyed blessing. Of more value than all else will be the vast tide of 

 traffic that will seek the cheap route of the canals. Seen from this 

 point the canals will always pay. The lateral waterways of JSTew 

 York, in their darkest hour, paid the people manyfold. The sin of 

 the abandoned canals rests to-day upon this charming region. The 

 fleets of steamers, sloops and barges have disappeared and the lakes 

 have drifted back to primeval solitude. 



VOL. LXXV. — 20. 



