ealth and civilization
can be acquired without the aid of navigation. From the moment
savages abandon the hunter state, and resign themselves to the
settled pursuits of agriculture, the march of population must
inevitably follow the direction of navigable waters; since in the
infancy of societies these furnish the only means of indulging
that spirit of barter which is co-existent with association, is
the main spring of industry, and the ultimate cause of all
civilization and refinement. In such situations the rude canoe
abundantly suffices to maintain the first necessary interchanges
of the superfluities of one individual for those of another.
Roads, waggons, etc. are refinements entirely unknown in the
incipient stages of society. They are the gradual results of
civilization, and consequent only on the accumulation of wealth
and the attainment of a certain point of maturity. Canals are a
still later result of civilization, and are undoubtedly the
greatest efforts for the encouragement of barter, and the
developement of industry, to which human power and ingenuity have
yet given birth. But after all, what are these artificial
channels of communication, these _ne plus ultras_ of human
contrivance, compared with those natural mediums of intercourse,
those mighty rivers which pervade every quarter of the globe?
What are they to the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, the
Mississippi, or the Amazon? What are they, in fact, compared even
with those infinite minor navigable streams, of which scarcely
any country, however circumscribed, is entirely destitute? What!
but mere pigmy imitations of nature, which wherever there is a
sufficient number of rivers, will never be resorted to, unless it
be for the purpose of connecting them together, or of avoiding
those long and tedious sinuosities to which they are _all_
more or less subject.

Viewing therefore this newly discovered river only in the
light of a river of the first magnitude, it must be evident that
this important discovery will have an incalculable influence on
the future progress of colonization; but to be enabled fully to
estimate the beneficial consequences of which it will be
productive; it is essential to take into the estimate, the
probable direction of its course, and the point of its confluence
with the ocean. This I have already stated is with good reason
imagined to be on the north-west coast; since every other part of
this vast island has been so accurately surv