HYDROLOGY OF NEW YORK 



595 



which we now have to consider. The canal, from Lake Erie to 

 the Hudson, may be fed by pure water from lakes, provided 

 mounds and aqueducts be made over intervening valleys, or the 

 •canal be carried around them. In every case the attending cir- 

 cumstances must decide. 



In June 1812, an act was passed authorizing the Canal Com- 

 missioners to borrow five million dollars in order to provide for 

 the improvement of the internal navigation of the State. 



The war of 1812 led to the suspension of the work, but in 1816 

 the project was revived; the act of 1812 was repealed and a new 

 act passed appropriating twenty thousand dollars for additional 

 surveys. 



In the report of the Commissioners, 1817, under the last act 

 referred to, in speaking of the proposed route across the Genesee 

 river, they say : 



Pursuing this route the canal never rises above the Lake Erie 

 level. It would* therefore, derive its waters, till it descends to the 

 Genesee level, and as much farther as may be necessary, from 

 that never failing reservoir (Lake Erie). 



Finally, on April 15, 1817, an act was passed which actually 

 led to the construction of the canal and which provides in detail 

 the method of procedure. 



In 1819, the canal having been partially constructed in the 

 eastern part of the State, active operations were begun in the 

 western part. During that year the Genesee river feeder was 

 surveyed by Thomas Hutchinson, an engineer in the employ of 

 the State. In 1820, in a communication from the Canal Com- 

 missioners to the Canal Committee of the Assembly, it is stated 

 that : 



Whenever in its progress from Seneca river west, the canal 

 reaches the Genesee river, that stream will afford an additional 

 navigation connected with it, for a distance of nearly forty miles ; 

 that is, by making sixty-three miles of canal at about half the 

 expense per mile at which the eastern section is estimated, the 

 State will have the benefit of one hundred miles of interior naviga- 

 tion through a country, at least as populous and productive as 

 any other of equal extent in the State. The surplus productions 

 of Ontario county alone have been reckoned as high in some sea- 

 sons as six hundred thousand dollars. 



