The construction of these two water ways was attended with the most interesting consequences. Even before they were completed their value had become clearly apparent. Boats were placed upon the Erie Canal as fast as the different levels were ready for use, and set to work in active transportation. They were small affairs compared with those of the present day, being about 50 or 60 tons burden, the modern canal boat being 180 or 200 tons. Small as they were, they reduced the cost of transportation immediately to one-tenth what it had been before. A ton of freight by land from Buffalo to Albany cost at that time $100. When the canal was open its entire length, the cost of freight fell from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a ton, according to the class of article carried; and the time of transit from 20 to 8 days, Wheat at that time was worth only $33 a ton in western New York, and it did not pay to send it by land to New York. When sent to market at all, it was floated down the Susquehanna to Baltimore, as being the cheapest and best market. The canal changed that. It now became possible to send to market a wide variety of agricultural produce--fruit, grain, vegetables, etc.--which, before the canal was built, either had no value at all, or which could be disposed of to no good advantage. It is claimed by the original promoters of the Erie Canal, who lived to see its beneficial effects experienced by the people of the country, that their work, costing less than $8.000,000 and paying its whole cost of construction in a very few years, added $100,000,000 to the value of the farms of New York by opening up good and ready markets for their products. The canal had another result. It made New York city the commercial metropolis of the country. An old letter, written by a resident of Newport, R. I., in that age, has lately been discovered, which speaks of New York city, and says: "If we do not look out, New York will get ahead of us." Newport was then one of the principal seaports of the country; it had once been the first. New York city certainly did "get ahead of us" after the Erie Canal was built. It got ahead of every other commercial city on the coast. Freight, which had previously gone overland from Ohio and the West to Pittsburg, and thence to Philadelphia, costing $120 a ton between the two cities named, now went to New York by way of the Hudson River and the Erie Canal and the lakes. Manufactures and groceries returned to the West by the same route, and New York became a flourishing and growing emporium immediately. The Erie Canal was enlarged in 1835, so as to permit the passage of boats of 100 tons burden, and the result was a still further reduction of the cost of freighting, expansion of traffic, and an increase of the general benefits conferred by the canal. The Champlain Canal had an effect upon the farms and towns lying along Lake Champlain, in Vermont and New York, kindred in character to that above described in respect to the Erie