The honor of originating the plan of a canal from the Great Lakes to the Hudson will forever lie with the brilliant, visionary Gouverneur Morris. The idea must have suggested itself to other minds even if it occurred to Morris originally; this cannot be disproved; but Morris's shoulders were broad enough for an honor too great for many, and his persistent labors in behalf of the project are altogether consistent with this verdict of a century. In 1777 Morris was known to have hinted of what we know as the Erie Canal. In that year he was sent to General Schuyler's army at Fort Edward, then slowly retiring before Burgoyne's advancing regiments. Morgan Lewis, then quartermaster, later governor of New York, leaves this testimony, in a letter dated May 26, 1828: "One evening in particular, while describing in the most animated and glowing terms the rapid march of the useful arts through our country, when once freed from a foreign yoke; the spirit with which agriculture and commerce both external and internal would advance; the facilities which would be afforded them by the numerous water courses, intersecting the country, and the ease by which they might be made to communicate; he announced, in language highly poetic, and to which I cannot do justice, that at no very distant day the waters of the great western inland seas would, by the aid of man, break through their barriers and mingle with those of the Hudson. I recollect asking him how they were to break through these barriers. To which he replied, that numerous streams passed them through natural channels, and that artificial ones might be conducted by the same routes."[17] In his diary for October, 1795, Morris describes his feeling on viewing the Caledonian Canal in Scotland; "when I see this," he writes, "my mind opens to a view of wealth for the interior of America, which hitherto I had rather conjectured than seen."[18] In a letter to Mr. Parish in January, 1801, he observes, after seeing a number of ships riding at anchor in Lake Erie, "Hundreds of large ships will, at no distant period, bound on the billows of these inland seas. At this point begins a navigation of more than a thousand miles [to the extremity of Lake Superior]. Shall I lead your astonishment up to the verge of incredulity? I will. Know then that one-tenth of the expense, borne by Britain in the last campaign, would enable ships to sail from London through Hudson's River _into Lake Erie_."[19]