will witness that he suggested that a petition be sent to the national Congress for the construction of a canal around the rapids to overcome the obstruction for the free passage of river craft, which the rapids prevented during the low water period of each year, and thus enhance the value of the great stream to the inland commerce of the west. [1] Reference again to President Smith's journal {XXIII} entry for the 8th of December, 1843 (this volume, p. 103) will disclose the fact that he gave instruction in the forenoon to his clerk to draw a plan for a dam in the Mississippi; and that in the afternoon of the same day the city council met and passed an ordinance authorizing Joseph Smith to "erect a dam of suitable height to propel mills and machinery from any point within the limits of said city, and below the Nauvoo House;" also in connection with this dam to construct a "harbor or basin for steamboats and other craft;" and to construct docks, wharfs and landings," the wharfage fees to be "regulated by ordinance of said city (this volume p. 106). _III. Nauvoo as a Possible Manufacturing Center._ What further contributed to the promise that Nauvoo would be a great manufacturing center as well as the center of an immense agricultural region with a splendid commercial outlet, was the fact that artisans and tradesmen of the very first order in skill, were rapidly gathering into the city, not only from the New England and other Eastern states of our own country, but also from the British Isles. It was inevitable if let alone that Nauvoo would become the greatest manufacturing center of Illinois, and among the first of such cities in the United States. The Prophet did not live to see even a commencement made upon these large enterprises he had conceived, but subsequently his zealous followers organized a company to carry them to a successful conclusion under the title of "The Nauvoo Water Power Company," [2] which began the construction of the dam on the 29th of April, 1845; but which had to be abandoned because of the hostilities that soon after increased and continued until they culminated in the expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from Illinois. [3] {XXIV} In addition to these measures, manufacturing and agricultural associations were incorporated; also the "Nauvoo House Associations" for the erection of a hotel, ambitious to be known as the finest hostelry in the Upper Mississippi country. One of the agricultural associations, known as the "Big Field Corporation," held six sections, or three thousand eight hundred and forty acres of land east of Nauvoo; and the year following the Prophet's death the company harvested about thirty thousand bushels of corn, nearly the same amount of wheat, besides an "abundance of oats, barley, buckwheat, potatoes and other vegetables." [4] _IV. Educational Measures at Nauvoo._