The extent to which the American people have fertilized, so to speak, the natural powers of those vast collections of water which surround and intersect their territory, is not less remarkable than their enterprise in constructing artificial lines of water communication. Besides the internal communication supplied by the rivers, properly so called, a vast apparatus of liquid transport is derived from the geographical character of their extensive coast, stretching over a space of more than 4,000 miles, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the delta of the Mississippi, indented and serrated with natural harbors and sheltered bays, fringed with islands forming sounds, throwing out capes and promontories which inclose arms of the sea in which the waters are free from the roll of the ocean, and which, for all the purposes of navigation, have the character of rivers and lakes. The lines of communication formed by the vast and numerous rivers are, moreover, completed in the interior by chains of lakes presenting the most extensive bodies of fresh water in the known world. Whatever question may be raised on the conflicting claims for the invention of steam navigation, it is an incontestable fact that the first steamboat practically applied for any useful purpose was placed on the Hudson, to ply between New-York and Albany, in 1808; and, from that time to the present that river has been the theatre of the most remarkable series of experiments of locomotion on water ever recorded in the history of man. The Hudson is navigable by steamers of the largest class as high as Albany, a distance of nearly 150 miles from New-York. The steam navigation upon this river is entitled to attention, not only because of the immense traffic of which it is the vehicle, but because it forms a sort of model for all the rivers of the Atlantic States. Two classes of steamers work upon it--one appropriated to the swift transport of passengers, and the other to the towing of the vast traffic which is maintained between the city of New-York and the interior of the State of that name, into the heart of which the Hudson penetrates.