The Great American Canals (Volume 2, The Erie Canal)Hulbert, Archer Butler
History
The Great American Canals (Volume 2, The Erie Canal)
Hulbert, Archer Butler
Erie Canal (N.Y.)
The general arguments in favor of inland navigation, apply with peculiar
force to the United States, and most emphatically to this state. A
geographical view of the country, will at once demonstrate the
unexampled prosperity that will arise from our cultivating the
advantages which nature has dispensed with so liberal a hand. A great
chain of mountains passes through the United States, and divides them
into eastern and western America. In various places, rivers break
through those mountains, and are finally discharged into the ocean. To
the west, there is a collection of inland lakes exceeding in its
aggregate extent, some of the most celebrated seas of the old world.
Atlantic America, on account of the priority of its settlement, its
vicinity to the ocean, and its favorable position for commerce, has many
advantages. The western country, however, has a decided superiority in
the fertility of its soil, the benignity of its climate, and the extent
of its territory. To connect these great sections by inland navigation,
to unite our Mediterranean seas with the ocean, is evidently an object
of the first importance to the general prosperity. Nature has effected
this in some measure; the St Lawrence emanates from the lakes, and
discharges itself into the ocean in a foreign territory. Some of the
streams which flow into the Mississippi, originate near the great lakes
and pass around the chain of mountains. Some of the waters of this state
which pass into Lake Ontario, approach the Mohawk; but our Hudson has
decided advantages. It affords a tide navigation for vessels of 80 tons
to Albany and Troy, 160 miles above New-York, and this peculiarity
distinguishes it from all the other bays and rivers in the United
States, viz:
The tide in no other ascends higher than the Granite Ridge, or within
thirty miles of the Blue Ridge, or eastern chain of mountains. In the
Hudson, it breaks through the Blue Ridge, and ascends above the eastern
termination of the Catskill, or great western chain; and there are no
interrupting mountains to prevent a communication between it and the
great western lakes.
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