time is estimated at $30,000,000. In 1857 and 1858 these
works were sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the Sunbury and
Erie Railway Company for $11,375,000, or about one-sixth of their cost
to the State.

In Ohio the legislature authorized the survey of a canal from Lake Erie
to the Ohio River. In 1825 an act was passed providing for the
construction of the Ohio Canal and a number of feeders. In 1831 the
canal was in operation from Cleveland to Newark, a distance of 176
miles, and the whole system was finished in 1833.

The State of Illinois completed in 1848 the Illinois and Michigan Canal,
connecting Chicago with La Salle on the Illinois River. This canal is
102 miles long, 60 feet wide and six feet deep. The construction by the
general government of the Hennepin Ship Canal, connecting the
Mississippi with Lake Michigan, has long been agitated in the Northwest.
Such a canal would be one of the most important channels of commerce in
the country, and it is to be hoped that this great project will be
completed at no distant day.

We have besides in the United States a large number of canals that were
constructed, and are still operated, by private companies, as the
Delaware and Hudson in New York and Pennsylvania, the Schuylkill, Lehigh
and Union canals in Pennsylvania, the Morris Canal in New Jersey, the
Chesapeake and Ohio and Maryland, etc. A large number of canals, some
public and others private property, have since the construction of
railroads been abandoned. Thus in New York 356 miles of canals, costing
$10,235,000; in Pennsylvania 477 miles, costing $12,745,000; in Ohio 205
miles, costing $3,000,000; in Indiana 379 miles, costing $6,325,000, are
no longer in use. All the canals that were ever built in New England
have likewise been abandoned for commercial purposes.

Nor was Canada slow in realizing the advantages which a system of canals
connecting the great lakes with the Atlantic Ocean promised to give her.
The construction of the Welland and St. Lawrence canals made it possible
for vessels to clear from Chicago direct for Liverpool, and this has to
a considerable extent diverted grain shipments to Montreal, giving the
Canadian dealers a decided advantage in this traffic.

It is a strange fact that, at least in this country, the zenith of the
canal-building era is found in the decade following the invention of the
steam railroad. For many years it was not believed that under ordinary
circumstan