If your Road possesses no other source of revenue than the local travel and transportation of the rich and populous region to be traversed by it--secured, as it will be, from competing lines by _natural barriers_ stretching out on either side from the Susquehanna to the Potomac--they would be sufficient to justify its construction. The influence of the Pennsylvania canal has called into activity all the elements necessary to render the enterprise profitable, and, in consequence, it will be more successful with that improvement, as a pioneer rival, than if it was now to enter upon an unoccupied field. Whatever may be the effect of your work upon the business of the canal--and I do not believe it will be injurious--there can be no doubt but that it will add very materially to the revenues of the Commonwealth. Important as the local sources of revenue are to the Company, they will afford but a limited amount of business compared with that to be derived from the great West. The route of your improvement is directly on the line that would be most desirable for a railroad to pass from St. Louis, or the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, through the center of the wealth and enterprise of the Mississippi valley to the Atlantic. With a map of the Union before you, it will be found to be impossible to draw a line upon it that would accommodate so large an amount of population, or an equal extent of fertile country. Through the broad bed of mountains that divide the Atlantic from the Western States--traversed by our route for 190 miles--natural gorges are found, cutting all of them to their bases, except the Allegheny, which is passed with comparatively easy gradients, and without encountering difficulties of a very unusual character. These favorable features of the country give to us a line which is the shortest and best that can be obtained between these sections of the Union, and insures to the Company the whole of the travel and light transportation, with much of the heavy trade, destined to Philadelphia and points north of this city, of the vast region between a line along the southern shores of Lake Erie, touching Lake Michigan, and extending to the far West, and the immediate valley of the Ohio river. The distance from Cleveland to New York being 80 miles shorter by this route than by the New York and Erie Railroad, much of the travel embarked upon the lakes for that city from the north and west must also be diverted to this line.