This great waterway, including the Hudson River, will pass from or to and through the city of New York and adjacent cities in New Jersey, Poughkeepsie, Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Oswego, Rochester, and Buffalo, besides smaller towns, possessing an aggregate population of over six million. The canal when completed will really terminate at Tonawanda, on the Niagara River, the route to Buffalo from there being via the Niagara River, the federal ship canal, and the Erie Basin. While the old canal has a depth of only from seven to nine feet and a width on the bottom of fifty-two, the new waterway will have a uniform depth of twelve feet, with a minimum width at the bottom of seventy-five feet, thus being capable of carrying boats one hundred and fifty feet long, twenty-five feet beam, and with a draft of ten feet. The present capacity of an Erie Canal boat is two hundred and forty tons, while the new boats will carry a thousand tons. I have shown in preceding articles what a tremendous saving to the people of the United States is made because of Lake transportation, and this will be greatly increased by the new canal. Large aggregations of capital will own not merely Lake vessels, but terminals and canal fleets as well, so that from Lake ports they can name a through freight rate to New York or to foreign countries. Within a few years after its completion, the canal will probably be carrying twenty million tons of freight from Buffalo to the ocean. Taking this figure as a basis, it is easy to figure what a tremendous saving the canal will bring about. It now costs three and a half cents a bushel to send grain from Buffalo to New York. The new canal rate should be not more than a cent a bushel. On twenty million bushels of grain this means a saving of five hundred thousand dollars, which will either go into the pockets of the producer or the consumer or be divided between the two. Freight of all descriptions, manufactured products, and iron and steel, can be transported from Buffalo to tidewater for half of a mill per ton per mile. In other words, on the new canal all kinds of freight can be shipped from Buffalo to New York, a distance of four hundred and forty-six miles, at twenty-two cents per ton. The present cost is eighty-seven cents. On twenty million tons this saving of nearly sixty-five cents a ton would total nearly thirteen million dollars. [Illustration: The Jack-knife Bridge at Buffalo.]