The water power of the Deerfield river is immense, its fall along the line of the Troy and Greenfield road being nearly six hundred feet; and this magnificent force is now idle, except at Shelburne Falls, though the finest privileges are scattered along the whole course of the river. Messrs. Lamson & Goodnow, who employ four hundred men at Shelburne Falls, in manufacturing cutlery, state that the Deerfield and North rivers, at that place, afford a one-thousand-horse power. Along the course of Miller's river, between Athol and Deerfield are also many excellent privileges unimproved. At Montague are Turner's Falls, on the Connecticut, with a power sufficient to operate the mills of Lowell, Lawrence and Manchester. All these splendid privileges only await the opening of the Tunnel route. Many of them would be at once improved were the road completed to the mouth of the tunnel. Messrs. Lamson and Goodnow state that they shall double their present force of four hundred men, as soon as it is open to Shelburne Falls. Some fifteen or twenty miles from the Eastern end of the tunnel lie extensive forests of spruce and pine, through which a highway has already been surveyed, and which will be built to the tunnel, as soon as the road is completed to that point. The whole surrounding region abounds in lumber of almost every description, which would become very valuable when the road is built, to say nothing of the extensive formations of stone, soapstone and serpentine which are found there. Though the Deerfield meadows afford some of the finest farms in New England, the tillage land will not compare in extent with that along the Western road; but in every other respect the resources and latent wealth of the Tunnel route are infinitely superior to those of the Western line. Six years ago, and _twenty-three years after the Western road was opened_, the population lying west of Springfield within ten miles of the Western road on a distance of forty-four miles, was 42,050; while that west of Greenfield, within ten miles of the Tunnel line on the same distance, without any railroad at all was 32,146. According to the average rate of increase, the population along the Tunnel line, would be more than doubled in twenty-three years. Were the mountain barrier pierced, and communication opened with the West, and the magnificent water power of the Deerfield made available, who doubts that this population would be increased fourfold in that space of time: or that more than one town would spring up between Greenfield and the Hoosac, in a few years, which would rival North Adams in growth and prosperity; or that in far less time than it has taken Lowell to acquire her present importance, a larger city than Lowell would stand on the banks of the Connecticut at Turner's Falls?