ANNUAL REPORT—COMMERCE. 
85 
“ It appeals from this statement that in 1850, in the states 
referred to, there were 130 miles of completed continuous rail¬ 
way, while in 1866, only sixteen years later, there were 7,641 
miles and more in process of construction. The total number 
of miles of completed and continuous railway in the United 
States was 8,950, in 1850, and 86,000 in 1866. These five 
newly-created states contained in that year nearly as many 
miles as the six older ‘ middle states,’ nearly twice as many as 
the six ‘ Uew England states,’ more than one-fifth as many as 
the United States, and more than one-fifth as many as all the 
the rest of the world. They contained in 1866 nearly as many 
miles as the United States in 1850. 
“ It also appears that the total area of these states embraces 
more than two hundred millions of acres of land, a surface as 
great as that of forty states as large as Massachusetts; and 
that the quantity actually improved is less than twenty-eight 
million acres—one acre in eight. 
“ The valley of the Mississippi, which, by the opening of 
water routes will become connected with the valley of the St. 
Lawrence, and tributary to the commerce of the lakes, con¬ 
tains 768,000,000 acres ‘of the finest lands on the face of the 
globe,’ enough to make more than 150 states as large as Mas¬ 
sachusetts. More territory than the areas of Great Britain, 
France, ^Spain, Austria, Prussia, European Turkey, and the 
Italian Peninsula combined. If peopled as Massachusetts is, 
it would contain five times the present population of the United 
States; and as France is, it would hold as many people as the 
whole area of Europe contains ; and as Belgium and the Neth¬ 
erlands are, with not the same danger of famine, it would con¬ 
tain four hundred millions of souls, largely more than one- 
third of the entire population of the world. 
“ With the valleys of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence so 
connected there would be an uninterrupted lake, river and 
canal navigation from New York to Fort Benton, at the falls 
of the Missouri, a distance, east and west, of nearly five thous¬ 
and miles. Barges loaded at Green Bay might be discharged 
of their cargoes in Montana. The distance on the Mississippi 
