Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 | Page 8

Our finest modern canals are scarcely smaller, and certainly capable of more uninterrupted, safe and heavy navigation, than many of the rivers which have figured in history, and which Pascal so graphically described as "moving roads that carry us whither we wish to go."
Such considerations as these have a profound bearing on many of the great economic problems of the age, but on none more than upon the grand problem which is now agitating the national mind in the United States: How to connect its seaboard and central regions by water. A glance at the map of the Union shows that its vast interior lies ensconced between the two mountain-walls of the Rocky chain on its western side and the Appalachian chain on its eastern side. Hemmed in by these barriers is the immense expanse of the most prolific, populous and prosperous section on the continent, which, taking its name from "the Father of Waters," is geographically designated as the Mississippi Valley, estimated by Professor J. W. Foster of the Chicago University to contain an area of two million four hundred and fifty-five thousand square miles, equal to that of all Europe excepting Russia, Norway and Sweden. Unlike the inland basin of Asia, in which the vast, mountain-girt Desert of Gobi stretches out its seas of sand, stony, sterile and desolate, the inland basin of America is its garden-spot and granary. Swept by the vapor-bearing winds and rain-distilling clouds from the Gulf of Mexico, and blessed with an excellent climate, it contains all the physical elements of an empire within itself. Its position makes it the national strong-hold, so that with military men it has grown into an adage, "Whoever is master of the Mississippi is lord of the continent." It is yet but half developed, but no far-seeing mind can form any estimate of its future growth and opulence. "With a varied and splendid entourage--an imperial cordon of States--nothing," says Dr. John W. Draper of New York, "can prevent the Mississippi Valley from becoming in less than three centuries the centre of human power." The only wall of partition that shuts it off from the great marts of the world is formed by the chain of the Alleghanies, which stretch along the Atlantic seaboard, from south-west to north-east, for twelve hundred miles. This natural barrier, with a mean altitude of two thousand feet, is destitute of a central axis, and consists, as the two Rogerses, who have most fully explored its ridges, showed, of a series of convex and concave flexures, "giving them the appearance of so many colossal entrenchments." With a broad artificial channel cut through its sunken defiles and picturesque gorges, there would at once be opened a gateway for the flow and reflow of the heavy commerce of the Western World.
In 1781 the practical and philosophic eye of Thomas Jefferson perceived the national necessity for a great trans-Alleghany water-line, and early in the year 1786, though still tossed on the wave of the Revolution, and not yet recovered from the shock of British invasion, the State which gave birth to the author of the "Declaration of Independence" declared for the enterprise. With all the means and energy at its command it pushed forward the work from year to year, and directed it, as Mr. Jefferson had proposed, so as to connect the head-waters of the James River, flowing from the Alleghany summits to the ocean, with the mountain-river known as the Great Kanawha, which rises near the fountains of the upper James and descends into the broad bosom of the Ohio. Although this undertaking was prosecuted slowly at first, it was permanently recognized as one that must go on; in 1832 and 1835 it received new impulses; and in 1840 it had reached the piedmont districts. In 1847 a powerful impetus was given to the work, and it was thenceforth, till 1856, forced rapidly westward up the eastern slopes of the Alleghanies, as a complete and working structure, above a point three hundred miles from the Atlantic capes, and two hundred miles from Richmond, leaving an unfinished gap to the upper or navigable part of Kanawha River of a little over one hundred and fifty miles. This enormous work was more than half finished at an outlay of $10,436,869--a sum which, during the economic period of its expenditure, went as far as nearly twice that amount would go now.
By recent legislation the State of Virginia proposes to turn over the entire property of the canal to the United States, on the sole condition of its being finished by the government and converted into a national water-highway for the good of the common country--in other words, upon the one condition of its nationalization.
It is sometimes contended that the day of canals has passed, and henceforward the railway