[89] In Virginia and Kentucky the state made no surveys before disposing of its lands. The settlers or speculators sought out a tract, made a survey, generally marking it by “blazing” the trees, and had it recorded in the state land-office. Areas of all shapes and sizes were patented, and unpatented strips of irregular shape lay between. Moreover, there was no limit to the number of patents that could be taken out on the same piece of land, the land-office concerning itself not at all with controversies over titles, merely guaranteeing an entry if no previous title was valid. The original claim to hundreds of thousands of acres in Kentucky was never settled, the land being eventually held under possession titles.--ED. [90] This refers to the Miami cession made at St. Mary’s, Ohio, October 6, 1818. By this treaty the Delaware and Miami Indians ceded all central Indiana between the Wabash and White rivers.--ED. [91] For the early history of Shawneetown, see Croghan’s _Journals_, volume i of our series, note 108.--ED. [92] Edwardsville, on Cahokia Creek, twenty miles north-east of St. Louis, was founded in 1816, and named in honor of Ninian Edwards, first governor of Illinois Territory.--ED. [93] A canal connecting Illinois River with Lake Michigan was first suggested by Jolliet in 1673, when he and Marquette returned by that route from their exploration of the Mississippi River. Such a canal was included in Gallatin’s system of internal improvements, proposed in 1808. President Madison laid the matter before Congress in 1814; Calhoun, as secretary of war, again called attention to it, in 1819; and for twenty years it found a place in the governor’s annual message. Finally (1836), its construction was undertaken by the state, aided by large congressional land grants. The Illinois-Michigan Canal, extending from La Salle, on the Illinois, to Lake Michigan, at the mouth of Chicago River, one hundred miles in all, was completed in 1848, and opened with much ceremony. In 1882 the state ceded the property to the United States, in the hope that the latter would enlarge it for a ship canal. But the next step was taken by the Chicago Sanitary District, which at a cost of about $35,000,000 has completed the Chicago Drainage Canal for the better disposal of the sewage of Chicago. This canal was opened January 2, 1900, after seven years spent in its construction. Flint’s reference is to the Des Plaines (Plein) River.--ED. [94] The Illinois military grant was the peninsula between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, as far north as a line drawn west from the confluence of the Illinois and Vermilion rivers. The value of the land began to appreciate soon after Flint’s journey, and ten counties were erected within it in 1824-25.--ED. [95] Van Zandt’s description of the military grant.--FLINT.