With regard to the expense of this work, different estimates will be formed. The commissioners appointed for that purpose were of opinion that it would not cost more than five millions of dollars. On this subject we must be guided by the light which experience affords in analogous cases. The canal of Languedoc, or canal of the two seas in France, connects the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and is 180 miles in length: it has 114 locks and sluices, and a tunnel 720 feet long. The breadth of the canal is 144 feet, and its depth six feet: it was begun in 1666, and finished in 1681, and cost £540,000 sterling, or £3,000 sterling a mile. The Holstein canal, begun in 1777, and finished in 1785, extends about fifty miles: is 100 feet wide at the top, and 54 at the bottom, and not less than ten feet deep in any part. Ships drawing nine feet four inches of water, pass through it from the German ocean, in the vicinity of Tonningen, into the Baltic. From two to three thousand ships have passed in one year. The expense of the whole work was a little more than a million and a half of dollars, which would be at the rate of 30,000 dollars a mile for this ship navigation. The extreme length of the canal from the Forth to the Clyde, in Scotland, is 35 miles. It rises and falls 160 feet by means of 39 locks. Vessels pass drawing eight feet water, having 19 feet beam, and 73 feet length. The cost is calculated at £200,000 sterling, which is at the rate of about 23,000 dollars a mile. But this was a canal for ships drawing eight feet of water, with an extraordinary rise for its length, and having more than one lock for every mile. The following will give an idea of the money expended on such works in England:-- _Cost_ _Miles_ The Rochdale Canal £291,900 31-1/2 Ellesmere 400,000 57 Kennet and Avon 420,000 78 Grand Junction 500,000 90 Leeds and Liverpool 800,000 129 The miles of canal are 385-1/2, and the cost is £2,411,900 sterling, or about 28,000 dollars per mile. But in the estimation of the cost of these canals, unquestionably the price of the land over which they pass is included, and this is enormous. The land alone for one canal of 16 miles, is said to have cost £90,000 sterling. With us this would be but small. If we look at the history of the English canals, we shall see how many objects of great expense are connected with them, with which we should have nothing to do, and that most of them have encountered and surmounted obstacles which we should not meet with. For instance, the Grand Junction canal passes more than once the great ridge which divides the waters of England; ours will pass over a country which in comparison is champaign.