It is most remarkable that now, at the beginning of another century, the people of New York should be planning a new Erie Canal; and perhaps the most significant fact in connection with the one-thousand-ton barge canal now projected is the fact that wherever rivers are available, as for instance the Mohawk, these are to be taken advantage of, showing that modern engineering science approves the early theory entertained by Washington and Morris of the canalization of rivers. The old Erie Canal cost upwards of eight millions, which was deemed an immense sum at that day. It is difficult always to measure by any monetary standard the great changes that the passing years have brought; but the new canal now to be built is to cost one hundred and one millions, which is in our time a comparatively moderate sum. The influence of the building of the old canal spread throughout the nation, and scores of canals were projected in the different States; it seems now that the influence of the promotion of the new Erie Canal will likewise be felt throughout the country. New York again leads the way. FOOTNOTE: [3] "The Origin of the Erie Canal." CHAPTER IX _The Demand for Canals and Navigable Rivers.--Washington's Search for a Route for a Canal or Road to bind the East and West.--Much Money spent in the Attempt to make Certain Rivers Navigable.--Failure of the Potomac Company to improve Navigation on the Potomac.--The Need for a Potomac and Ohio Canal to withhold the Western Trade from the Erie.--The Potomac Canal Company, re-named the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company.--Apparent Impossibility of building a Canal from the Potomac to Baltimore.--Philip E. Thomas conceives the Idea of a Railroad from Baltimore to the West.--The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company's Jealousy of this Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.--Both the Canal and the Railroad started.--Difficulties in the Way of Both.--The Canal's Exclusive Right of Way up the Potomac to be now shared with the Railroad.--The Railroad completed to the Ohio, 1853.--A Canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburg built rapidly.--The Alleghany Portage Railway opened for Traffic in Three Years.--Washington's Efforts to accomplish the Same End.--The Railways to a Large Extent supersede the Canals._ THOMAS AND MERCER: RIVAL PROMOTERS OF CANAL AND RAILWAY [Illustration] ALTHOUGH the Cumberland National Road proved a tremendous boon to the young West and meant to the East commercially all that its promoters hoped, other means of transportation were being hailed loudly as the nineteenth century dawned. Improved river-navigation was one of these, and canals were another. When it was fully realized how difficult was the transportation of freight across the Alleghanies on even the best of roads, the cry was raised, "Cannot waterways be improved or cut from Atlantic tide-water to the Ohio River?"