With this system completed, the Mississippi might communicate by large steamers with all the lakes, and eastward, by the enlarged canals, to Chicago or Green Bay, or pass up the Ohio, by the Wabash or from Lawrenceburg or Cincinnati to Toledo, or by Portsmouth or Bridgeport to Cleveland or by Bridgeport to Erie city, or by Pittsburg, up the Alleghany, to Olean and Rochester, on the Erie canal, or by ship canal, from Buffalo to Ontario, thence, by the St. Lawrence, to Lake Champlain and the Hudson, or by Oswego to Syracuse, or by the Erie canal from Buffalo to the Hudson, or by the Chenango or Chemung route, down the Susquehanna, to Philadelphia, or Baltimore, or down the Chesapeake to Norfolk, and on through Albemarle Sound south. Or, going from the East, or South, westward by these routes, the steamer could proceed west, and up the Missouri, to the points where they would meet the great railway leading to the Pacific. Indeed, if we do our duty now, the next generation may carry similar canals from the head of Lake Superior to the Mississippi and Missouri, and up the Kansas or Platte to the gold mines of Colorado, or, from the great falls of the Missouri, to the base of the Rocky mountains, with railroad connection thence to the mouth of the Oregon and Puget's sound. There would be connected with this system, the lakes, and all the Eastern waters, the Ohio and all its tributaries, including the Youghiogheny, Monongahela, Alleghany, Kanawa, Guyandotte, Big Sandy, Muskingum, Scioto, Miami, Wabash, Licking, Kentucky, Green river, Barren, Cumberland, and Tennessee, the upper Mississippi and its tributaries, especially the Illinois and Wisconsin, the Desmoines and St. Peter's, the lower Mississippi and all its vast tributaries, the St. Francis, White river, Arkansas, Red river, and Yazoo. These are no dreams of an enthusiast, but advancing realities, if _now_, _now_ we will only do our duty in crushing this rebellion, and exorcise the foul fiend of slavery, that called it into being. We may best judge of what we may do in the future, by what we have done in the past. We have constructed 4,650 miles of canals (including slackwater), at a cost of $132,000,000. We have constructed (including city roads) 31,898 miles of railroad, at a cost of $1,203,285,569, making an aggregate, for railroads and canals, of $1,335,285,569. Now, one tenth of this sum will probably make all the works proposed now to be executed, for they are all only enlargements of existing canals, except the ship canal round the falls of Niagara, and a similar canal from Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, a work of vast importance, but that can only be accomplished with the aid and consent of Canada, and is not now estimated.