The population of Shippingport may be estimated at 600 souls, including strangers. Some taste is already perceptible in the construction of their houses, many of which are neatly built and ornamented with galleries, in which, of a Sunday, are displayed all the beauty of the place. It is, in fact, the _Bois de Boulogne_ of Louisville, it being the resort of all classes on high days and holydays. "At these times, it exhibits a spectacle at once novel and interesting. The number of steamboats in the port, each bearing one or two flags, the throng of horses, carriages, and gigs, and the contented appearance of a crowd of pedestrians, all arrayed in their "Sunday's best" produce an effect it would be impossible to describe." The reason of the sudden decay of this once flourishing place is found in the fact that its utility as a point of embarkation and debarkation for goods, ceased with the building of the Canal. Previous to this time it had been, during three parts of the year, the head of the navigation of the lower Ohio. Even as early as this, however, the necessity for overcoming the impediment to navigation occasioned by the falls was recognized and acted upon; and in the year 1804, a Canal Company was chartered; but nothing was done beyond surveys until long after this time. The subject of the Canal, however, was one of absorbing interest with the citizens of Louisville from this time forward, and various plans were proposed, adopted, rejected and discussed, until the incorporation of the present Canal Company in 1825. The movement toward removing the obstruction in the river in any form had its opponents, who urged that the sole commercial advantage to be possessed by the city consisted in the necessity for numerous commission and forwarding houses to receive and reship the vast quantities of merchandise which were to pass up and down this great artery. Among the many plans suggested for overcoming the break in the navigation of the river, one of the earliest and most strongly urged was one which has yet its warm and earnest adherents,--this is the construction of a Canal on the Indiana shore,--a plan which the citizens of Louisville have long since ceased to look upon except with aversion, but which the residents in a sister city are still urging with a violence which proves, contemptuously as they may speak of Louisville, that their fears of her as a rival city are strong enough to induce them to wish to cripple, if not to destroy her. Former surveys have all long since proved the Kentucky shore to be best suited to the purposes of a Canal, and the inadequacy of the present construction to the growing trade of the river does not seem to demonstrate the necessity for still further obstructing its course, even during high water, by an additional ditch on the other bank.