future period, when men have prodigally squandered their heritage of coal and wood wealth, they will be invoked by the mechanic and manufacturer to furnish their chief motive-power. As an economist of the force-_capital_ deposited by the sun's influence in the bowels of the earth during its carboniferous epoch, and as using, instead of it, the force-_interest_ received annually from the sun through the medium of rain and wind, the water-way will and must become one of the most generally employed engines of the higher civilizations yet to be. So long as the subject of trans-Alleghany water-communication was viewed as one merely affecting individual States, it possessed no national interest. But in its present aspect it is of vast moment, both national and international. While many overcrowded portions of the Old World are often confronted with both the spectre and the reality of gaunt famine, and their breadless thousands are looking wistfully to the fresh and prolific fields of the New, for relief, there are annually lost to the country and the world vast stores of corn, which the Western farmers cannot afford to send by railroad to the seaboard for foreign shipment, and freely use as a substitute for fuel. This fact is suggestive and significant. To understand its import we have only to look at the geographical position of the West and the Mississippi Valley, isolated in the heart of a continent. There are three outlets for the commerce of these sections seeking New York, the emporium of the New World, and the chief trans-Atlantic markets: 1. By the Mississippi River to New Orleans, and thence by transhipment to New York and Europe. 2. By the northern lakes to the St. Lawrence Valley, or by the former to the Erie Canal. 3. By the costly transportation of railroads over the Alleghanies or along the lake-shores eastward. [Illustration: THE CANAL BASIN AT LEXINGTON, VIRGINIA.]