but
which at best were not very reliable in their habits, as I found
to my cost. This was to be corrected by the "improvement," which,
in their delusive hope, was to give them cheap water transportation
all the year around.

At that time railroads were in their infancy. They have since
practically destroyed or crippled all internal navigation on inland
rivers, reaching their iron arms over the United States, traversing
north and south, east and west--a vast gridiron of roads, in value
greater than the market value of all the land in the United States
in 1837. Before the first railroad was built in Ohio the Muskingum
improvement was completed, but it proved to be a bad investment.
The canals of Ohio and this improvement were, perhaps, the necessary
forerunner of the railroads to come, but the money expended on them
was practically lost. And I believe that the experiment now being
made by the United States in the improvement of the Ohio, Missouri
and Mississippi Rivers will end in a like result on a grander scale.
By the demolition of the forests which covered this great valley,
the supply and distribution of the waters and rivers in this region
will be so diminished at certain seasons as to render these water-
ways worthless for navigation. Engineers may make dams that will
hold water and locks that may lift a steamboat, but if the clearing
away of forests prevents the usual fall of rain and causes its
absorption into the earth, and if the dispersion of water by its
use and waste in cities, are to continue, the dam will not be
filled, and the lock will be like a stranded vessel, fit only as
a quarry for cut stone, or for a railway arch over a street of
asphalt in a growing city. Captain Fearing railed against the
steamboats as many now inveigh against the railroads, but these
two great agencies will divide the commerce of the world between
them. The railroads will possess the land, the steamboats the
ocean and the great fresh waters of the world. Possibly steamboats
may be utilized on short stretches of rivers, but even on these
they will have to compete with railroads having wide-reaching
connections which they do not possess. The money expended to levee
the Mississippi may be lost by the United States, but the planters
will receive some benefit from it in the protection given to their
crops. The steamboats in interior waters will be exchanged for
iron whalebacks, and new forces of a new nature, as yet only