WATER COMMUNICATIONS. 67 
fi possibility of opening it, and as soon as the 
company formed for the purpose have suffi¬ 
cient funds,, it will certainly be done. From 
the place up to which it is asserted the pas¬ 
sage of the Patowmac can be opened, the 
distance across land to Cheat River is only 
thirty-seven miles. This last river is not at 
present navigable for more than fifty miles 
above its mouth ; but it can be rendered so 
for boats, and so far up that there will only be 
the short portage that I have mentioned be¬ 
tween the navigable waters of the two rivers. 
Things are only great or small by comparison, 
and a portage of thirty - seven miles will 
be thought a very short one, when found 
to be the only interruption to an inland navi¬ 
gation of upwards of two thousand seven hun¬ 
dred miles, of which two thousand one hun¬ 
dred and eighty-three are down stream. Cheat 
River is two hundred yards wide at its mouth, 
and falls into the Monongahela, which runs 
on to Pittsburgh, and there receives the Al¬ 
leghany River; united they form the Ohio, 
which after a course of one thousand one 
hundred and eighty-three miles, during which 
it receives twenty-four other considerable 
rivers, some of them six hundred yards wide at 
the mouth, and navigable for hundreds of 
miles up the country, empties itself into the 
Mississippi, 
