[Illustration: Map of Indiana.] _Communications._--During the early period, the settlement of the northern and central portions of the state was greatly retarded by the lack of highways or navigable waterways. The Wabash and Erie canal (1843), which connected Lake Erie with the Ohio river, entering the state in Allen county, east of Fort Wayne, and following the Wabash river to Terre Haute and the western fork of the White river from Worthington, Greene county, to Petersburg, Pike county, whence it ran south-south-west to Evansville; and the White Water canal from Hagerstown, Wayne county, mostly along the course of the White Water river, to Lawrenceburg, on the Ohio river, in the south-eastern corner of the state, although now abandoned, served an important purpose in their day. The completion (about 1850) of the National Road, which traversed the state, still further aided the internal development. With the beginning of railway construction (about 1847), however, a new era was opened. Indiana is unusually well served with railways, which form a veritable network of track in every part of the state. It is traversed by nearly all the great transcontinental trunk line systems, and also by important north and south lines. The total railway mileage in January 1909 was 7286.20 m. There has been a great development also in interurban electric lines, which have been adapted both to passenger and to light freight and express traffic; in 1908 there were 31 interurban electric lines within the state with a mileage of 1500 m. Indianapolis is the centre of this interurban network. The first trolley sleeping cars were those used on the Ohio and Indiana interurban railways. The deepening of the channel of the Wabash river was begun in 1872. Below Vincennes before 1885 boats of 3-ft. draft could navigate the river, but after work was concentrated in 1885 on the lock at Grand Rapids, near Mt Carmel, Ill., the channel was soon clogged again, and in 1909 it was impossible for boats with a greater draft than 20 in. to go from Mt Carmel to Vincennes, although up to June 1909 about $810,000 had been spent by the Federal government on improving this river. In 1879 an appropriation was made for the improvement of the channel of the White river, but no work was done here between 1895 and 1909, and although the lower 13 m. of the river was navigable for boats with a draft of 3 ft. or less, there was practically no traffic up to 1909 on the White, because there was no outlet for it by the Wabash river.