The first of these routes is of course the longest, both in time and distance. It takes the merchandise by an extensive detour, which, from the mouth of the Ohio River, _via_ the Gulf, to New York, exceeds three thousand miles. Although lying in the powerful current of the Gulf Stream, which is a propelling force speeding forward the vessel that trusts its warm, blue waters, this route is exposed to the most violent cyclonic storms, and navigators shun and evade it during the equinoctial or hurricane season. But, barring danger and distance, no country with such an outlet to the sea as the Mississippi River affords can be considered dependent upon any artificial communication. Notwithstanding the objections which exist to this long route (which is both expensive and long), its trade is rapidly increasing from the very exigencies of the case. The introduction of the barge-system on the great Western rivers has greatly facilitated and cheapened transportation. Steam-tugs, carrying neither passengers nor freight, are substituted for the steamboat. These tugs never stop except to coal and attach the barges, already loaded before their arrival at a city, and proceed with great despatch. Steaming steadily on, night and day, they make the trip from St. Louis to New Orleans almost as quickly as the oft-detained steamboat. The distance has been made between these cities by a tug, with ten heavily-freighted barges, in six days. The tugs plying on the Minnesota River carry with good speed barges containing thirty thousand bushels of wheat, and the freight of a single trip would fill more than eighty railroad-cars. This transportation is cheap, because the tugs require less than one-fourth the expense for running and management required by the steamboats. The carriage of grain from Minnesota to New Orleans by this method costs no more than the freightage from the same point to Chicago by rail. A boatload of wheat from St. Paul, taking the river route, is not once handled until it is put aboard ship at the Crescent City. The mighty energy of the North-west--"the Germany of America," as it has been well called by Dr. Draper--has long since discovered that the Mississippi is the best existing route to European markets. Grain can be shipped by way of St. Louis and New Orleans to New York and Europe twenty cents a bushel cheaper than it can be carried by the other existing routes. As long ago as 1868 the Illinois Central Railroad took hold of the West India and Southern trade through the river route, and offered such commercial inducements to Western importers that "Havana sends her products by this route to the North-west, instead of by New York."[A] As the North-west expands and multiplies in resources and population, it will be compelled to transact its foreign and seaboard commerce through the noble navigable waters of the Mississippi, unless it can obtain a short and cheap transportation to New York by some trans-Alleghany water-line. In the event of the