h these reduced
freights, would secure immense additional markets for her products, and
the East send a much larger amount of manufactures, in return cargoes,
to the West.

A new and great impulse would be given to the coal and iron interest. If
the Delaware, Susquehanna, and their tributaries, and the Ohio and its
tributaries, especially the Youghiogheny, Monongahela, and Alleghany had
the benefit of low freight, afforded by these canals, they could supply
not only the seaboard at reduced rates, but also central and western New
York, the Canadas, and the whole lake region, with coal and iron.
Indeed, the increased demand, thus caused for these great articles,
would soon bring our make of iron, and consumption of coal, up to that
of England, and ultimately much larger. Freight is a much greater
element in the cost of coal and iron, than of agricultural products, but
the increased exchange would be mutually advantageous.

With this system completed, the Mississippi might communicate by large
steamers with all the lakes, and eastward, by the enlarged canals, to
Chicago or Green Bay, or pass up the Ohio, by the Wabash or from
Lawrenceburg or Cincinnati to Toledo, or by Portsmouth or Bridgeport to
Cleveland or by Bridgeport to Erie city, or by Pittsburg, up the
Alleghany, to Olean and Rochester, on the Erie canal, or by ship canal,
from Buffalo to Ontario, thence, by the St. Lawrence, to Lake Champlain
and the Hudson, or by Oswego to Syracuse, or by the Erie canal from
Buffalo to the Hudson, or by the Chenango or Chemung route, down the
Susquehanna, to Philadelphia, or Baltimore, or down the Chesapeake to
Norfolk, and on through Albemarle Sound south. Or, going from the East,
or South, westward by these routes, the steamer could proceed west, and
up the Missouri, to the points where they would meet the great railway
leading to the Pacific. Indeed, if we do our duty now, the next
generation may carry similar canals from the head of Lake Superior to
the Mississippi and Missouri, and up the Kansas or Platte to the gold
mines of Colorado, or, from the great falls of the Missouri, to the base
of the Rocky mountains, with railroad connection thence to the mouth of
the Oregon and Puget's sound. There would be connected with this system,
the lakes, and all the Eastern waters, the Ohio and all its tributaries,
including the Youghiogheny, Monongahela, Alleghany, Kanawa, Guyandotte,
Big Sandy, Muskingum, Scioto, Miami, Wabash, Lickin