settlers went up and produce came
down. But the winding stream, the shifting channel, the swift current,
the frequent snag and sand-bar made navigation down-stream dangerous
and navigation upstream incredibly slow: the heavier vessels took three
months for the trip from New Orleans to Louisville. With the coming of
the steamboat a strong impetus was given alike to settlement and to
export trade. By the forties New Orleans ranked the fourth port in the
world and the Mississippi valley exceeded the British Isles in the
ownership of ships' tonnage. In 1850 the Mississippi still carried to
the sea cargoes twice the value of those that sought the Lakes and the
Erie Canal, though in the import trade these proportions were reversed.
At this time a line drawn east and west through the centre of Ohio
marked the commercial watershed. Not until after the Civil War did the
glories of the Mississippi pass away.

Next, New York devised its master-stroke, the Erie Canal. Gouverneur
Morris and De Witt Clinton saw the opportunity which the Mohawk-Hudson
cleft in the Appalachian barrier offered, and the state rose to it.
{33} Digging was begun in 1817, and in 1825 the first barge passed from
Lake Erie to the Hudson. At first the canal was only a four-foot
ditch, but it proved the greatest single factor in the development of
the region south of the Lakes. Prosperous cities--Buffalo, Lockport,
Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Schenectady--sprang up all along the route.
Cost of transport from Buffalo to New York was cut in four. The
success of New York led Pennsylvania to build canals through the state
to Pittsburg, with a portage railroad over the Alleghanies, while in
the west canals were dug to connect Lake Erie with the Ohio, and Lake
Michigan with the Illinois and the Mississippi.

To the Canadian of that day the West meant Upper Canada or Canada West,
and 'the far west' meant Illinois and Indiana. The Saskatchewan was to
him little more than the Yang-tse-Kiang. But although the far west was
not under his own flag, it dominated his thoughts as greatly as the
North-West has dominated our thoughts half a century later. Canada
sought its share of the western trade. The Canadian provinces were
thinly peopled, their revenues were scanty and their credit low, but
the example of New York stirred them to the effort to remove the
barriers to {34} navigation in the St Lawrence, and to offer their
magnificent lake and river ship-route a