HYDROLOGY OP NEW YORK 



821 



thousand horsepower at less cost per unit than can be furnished 

 by this power canal. 



Mr John Patten, in a paper read before the National Irrigation 

 Congress held at Ogden, Utah, in 1902 proposed a canal along this 

 line which very much exceeds in size that proposed by either Mr 

 North or Mr McClintock. The name of the canal proposed by Mr 

 Patten is to be "The Great Eastern Canal." The water supply will 

 be taken from Niagara river at Tonawanda and conveyed through 

 a canal to Rochester, where a dam 54 feet high across the Genesee 

 river will continue it to the hills south of Rochester, effecting a 

 natural embankment. The Great Eastern canal will continue in 

 an easterly direction near the line of the Erie canal and the 

 Seneca river to Syracuse, passing through the edge of Syracuse 

 and continuing on to the Mohawk valley near Utica. After en- 

 tering the Mohawk valley, the canal continues along the river 

 as far as Schenectady, at which point there will be a dam across 

 the Mohawk diverting the waters southeast along the slope of 

 the Catskill mountains to the valleys of Esopus and Rondout 

 creeks, where there is to be a large dam intercepting the flow of 

 these creeks. This dam is high enough to flood the Wallkill val- 

 ley, so that the course of the canal is up the Wallkill river into 

 New Jersey, where it empties into Walnut valley and from 

 thence into the Delaware as far as Easton, forming a natural 

 waterway from Kingston to Easton over a hundred miles in 

 length. 



After damming the Delaware at Easton the course of the canal 

 will continue up the Lehigh river, and southerly to within about 

 five miles of Reading, where a dam across the Schuylkill river 

 continues the water in the depression of the valley southerly. The 

 canal is to be continued south from this point, embracing the 

 Susquehanna, Potomac and James rivers. The plan calls for 

 submerging Ellentown, Bethlehem and a few other towns, which 

 Mr Patten states will make it a very expensive project. 



There will be waterways from New York, Washington, Balti- 

 more, Richmond, Philadelphia, Trenton and other cities extending 

 to the canal. New York has exceptional advantages, inasmuch 

 as fully 500 feet fall is obtained, with a natural outlet to the 



