sury of light-houses, beacons,
buoys, and other improvements within the bays, inlets, and harbors of
the ocean and lake coasts immediately connected with foreign commerce.

But if the distinction thus made rests upon the differences between
foreign and domestic commerce it can not be restricted thereby to the
bays, inlets, and harbors of the oceans and lakes, because foreign
commerce has already penetrated thousands of miles into the interior
of the continent by means of our great rivers, and will continue so to
extend itself with the progress of settlement until it reaches the limit
of navigability.

At the time of the adoption of the Constitution the vast Valley of the
Mississippi, now teeming with population and supplying almost boundless
resources, was literally an unexplored wilderness. Our advancement has
outstripped even the most sanguine anticipations of the fathers of
the Republic, and it illustrates the fact that no rule is admissible
which undertakes to discriminate, so far as regards river and harbor
improvements, between the Atlantic or Pacific coasts and the great lakes
and rivers of the interior regions of North America. Indeed, it is quite
erroneous to suppose that any such discrimination has ever existed
in the practice of the Government. To the contrary of which is the
significant fact, before stated, that when, after abstaining from all
such appropriations for more than thirty years, Congress entered upon
the policy of improving the navigation of rivers and harbors, it
commenced with the rivers Mississippi and Ohio.

The Congress of the Union, adopting in this respect one of the ideas of
that of the Confederation, has taken heed to declare from time to time,
as occasion required, either in acts for disposing of the public lands
in the Territories or in acts for admitting new States, that all
navigable rivers within the same "shall be deemed to be and remain
public highways."

Out of this condition of things arose a question which at successive
periods of our public annals has occupied the attention of the best
minds in the Union. This question is, What waters are public navigable
waters, so as not to be of State character and jurisdiction, but of
Federal jurisdiction and character, in the intent of the Constitution
and of Congress? A proximate, but imperfect, answer to this important
question is furnished by the acts of Congress and the decisions of the
Supreme Court of the United States defining