For a new water route to the sea had been opened and wondrously developed. The Great Lakes were the shortest waterway to the Atlantic, and New York dug its Erie Canal which afforded an outlet--pinched and straitened, it is true, but still an outlet--for the cargoes of the lake schooners and the early steamers of the unsalted seas. Even the commonwealths forming the north bank of the Ohio River turned their faces away from the stream that had started them on the pathway to wealth and greatness, and dug canals to Lake Erie, that their wheat, corn, and other products might reach tidewater by the shortest route. The great cargoes from Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville, began to be legends of the past, and the larger boats were put on routes in Louisiana, or on the Mississippi, from Natchez south, while others were reduced to mere local voyages, gathering up freight from points tributary to St. Louis. The glory of the river faded fast, and the final stroke was dealt it when some man of inventive mind discovered that a little, puffing tug, costing one-tenth as much as a fine steamboat, could push broad acres of flatboats, loaded with coal, lumber, or cotton, down the tortuous stream, and return alone at one-tenth the expense of a heavy steamer. That was the final stroke to the picturesqueness and the romance of river life. The volume of freight carried still grows apace, but the glory of Mississippi steamboat life is gone forever. **Transcriber's Note: Page 268: change infreqently to infrequently CHAPTER IX THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES--THEIR PART IN EFFECTING THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA--THEIR RAPID DEVELOPMENT--WIDE EXTENT OF THE TRADE--EFFORT OF LORD NORTH TO DESTROY IT--THE FISHERMEN IN THE REVOLUTION--EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE THE INDUSTRY--ITS PART IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY--THE FISHING BANKS--TYPES OF BOATS--GROWTH OF THE FISHING COMMUNITIES--FARMERS AND SAILORS BY TURNS--THE EDUCATION OF THE FISHERMEN--METHODS OF TAKING MACKEREL--THE SEINE AND THE TRAWL--SCANT PROFITS OF THE INDUSTRY--PERILS OF THE BANKS--SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES--THE FOG AND THE FAST LINERS--THE TRIBUTE OF HUMAN LIFE.