make their shores tributary to the trade of its valley), and flowing through more than twenty degrees of latitude, affords a variety of productions, for commercial interchange, compared with which those of the valley of the Amazon or the shores of the Mediterranean must, even under the highest development, remain utterly insignificant. The Mediterranean system and the valley of the Amazon are limited in their products by the climatic uniformity of a single zone. Here is a valley developing itself northward and southward, in extent of area 2,231,000 square miles; all of it now a part of our country, and under the jurisdiction of the Congress of the United States. Why, the whole territory of the original thirteen States, embraced within their actual boundaries, was but 341,756 square miles, exclusive of the northwestern territory; and our entire domain to-day is 3,527,684 square miles, including Alaska, while the valley of the Mississippi is two-thirds of that area. This vast valley with its inconceivable riches from its soil and from under its soil-from its cereals, its cotton, tobacco, hemp and fruits, from its ores, its quarries, its forests; with everything needed for human sustenance, comfort, and civilization; with possibilities beyond even conception or comprehension; lying, too, in the centre of the continent, with no Alpine ranges to bar its outlets-what, to-day, is its chief want, its imperative necessity? It is that the channels which the Almighty has furnished shall be improved and made available by man's skill and labor; and to use the very language of the Executive Committee in inviting you to this conference, our object is to "secure your coöperation towards obtaining such national legislation as will insure the improvement of the present, and the opening up of new water-lines of transportation to the seaboard." It is the very order of Providence that we should do our part, and we must do it to enjoy the beneficence of our Creator.

"The river navigation of the Great West," said Mr. Benton, "is the most wonderful on the globe; and, since the application of steam-power to the propulsion of vessels, it possesses the essential qualities of open navigation. Speed, distance, cheapness, magnitude of cargoes are all there, and without the perils of the sea from storms and enemies. The steamboat is the ship of the river, and finds in the Mississippi and its tributaries the amplest theater for the diffusion and display of its power. Wonderful river! connected with seas by the head and by the mouth; stretching its arms toward the Atlantic and the Pacific; lying in a valley which is a valley from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay; drawing its first waters, not from rugged mountains, but from the plateau of the lakes in the centre of the continent, and in communication with the sources of the St. Lawrence and the streams which take their course north to Hudson's Bay; draining the largest extent of the richest land; collecting the products of every clime, even the frigid, to bear the whole to market in the South, there to meet the products of the entire world.

Such is the Mississippi! and who can calculate the aggregate of its advantages, and the magnitude of its future results?" This river and its tributaries. float annually upon their bosoms more than $2,000,000,000 of commerce, which is an excess of more than $1,000,000,000 over our foreign commerce, and nearly $2,000,000,000 in excess of our own carrying trade, coastwise and foreign.

Were there an absolute and total famine over all the rest of the earth, and were no iron produced elsewhere on the globe, and were there no productions for human housing or clothing, we could from this valley supply the whole twelve hundred millions of the human race, and provide, too, for their rapid increase in case they should stop killing each other by war.

Not only our sister States, east and south, but the commercial world itself stretches forth its arms for our supplies.

Cheap transportation to the seaboard is the demand. Water communication by the very channels of nature is to be provided, or channels are to be constructed by art where nature has pointed out the course.

More than half a century ago, and before the invention of railroads, a system of water communication was projected, embracing the entire territory of the United States. It was under the inspiration of that movement, that DeWitt Clinton started and carried to completion the great Erie Canal, connecting the waters of the Lakes with the Hudson River, opening up for settlement and cultivation the vast wilderness of western New York, giving a partial outlet to the rapidly increasing productions of the country still further west, and adding incalculably to the wealth of the Empire State. For a time, railroads became the popular enterprise. The "raging canal," with its snail-like pace, was forgotten in the more fascinating mode of travel and transit afforded by the locomotive, annihilating space and bounding over the country at the rate of from twenty to forty miles an hour!

A still wider scope of country was opened up; immigration poured in from every direction; towns and cities sprung into existence as if by the enchanter's wand; and the great Northwest, hitherto a wilderness under the dominion of the savage and the wild beast, smiled with fruitful fields and happy homes. Land carriage, and especially for heavy freights-the multifarious productions of a country so fertile and so vast in extent, and increasing with such incredible rapidity in population - cannot supply the need, both on account of the lack of facilities, and the great cost to the producer in reaching the best markets of the country. The old idea again becomes new. The demand for safe and cheap transportation is revived. Old schemes and new schemes of internal improvement for utilizing our great rivers, and uniting the waters of different States by canals, thus shortening distances, is again becoming the order of the day, and the cry is heard on every hand: water communication for heavy freights; the railroad for rapid travel and lighter burdens.

I do not stop to inquire which of the numerous projects named is the most important, or which of them should first receive the national aid. Let this be decided after a careful survey by competent scientific men, and by the wisdom of Congress, after all the facts have been carefully collected, estimates of the cost made, and the relative importance and pressing need of different improvements fully considered. Among others may be mentioned the Lake and St. Lawrence route; the junction of the Ohio and Potomac, and of the James and Kanawha Rivers; the Mississippi and Gulf route; Lake Erie Canal and Hudson River route; the Atlantic and Great Western Canal, uniting the waters of the Mississippi Valley with the rivers of Georgia, eastern Alabama, and South Carolina.

Regarding this latter project I may be permitted to quote a short paragraph from a recent address of Governor Smith, of Georgia:

"The route for the proposed Atlantic and Great Western Canal has at last been found, as recent surveys fully demonstrate, and it passes through the State of Georgia. This work will furnish the cheap transportation so much needed by the whole country, will open a home market for our varied products more attractive than that which the West now finds abroad, and in my judgment will cure the trouble complained of without resorting to the extraordinary expedient above referred to.

"Uniting, as it will do, two great systems of navigation, its importance to the whole country is so evident as to require no discussion. That it will greatly increase the production of cotton is firmly believed; that it will furnish a home market of vast value to the food-producing section requires no demonstration; and that it will give us of the South what we most needdirect trade with foreign lands, immigration to fill and build up our waste places, and an increase of capital for the development of our resources— is susceptible of the clearest proof. The route has been surveyed and found eminently feasible. The verdict of the country pronounces it a work of national importance and necessity, and what now remains to be done is to devise the best and surest means for its speedy accomplishment."

The Congressional Committee charged with inquiring into the necessity for such a canal furnishes some valuable information in relation thereto. The main features of the route are thus indicated:

Commencing at Guntersville, the most southern point reached by the Tennessee River, thence to Coosa River, thirty miles distant, which it enters and follows to Rome, Georgia, up to which point that stream is navigable for large steamboats at all seasons of the year.

From Rome the canal follows the Etowah River to its point of nearest contact with the Ocmulgee, and thence down the latter stream to navigable waters and the Atlantic Ocean.

By this means the entire navigable waters of Alabama, east Mississippi

and west Florida will be connected with the vast inland sea, comprised in the term "Mississippi River and its tributaries"; also with the navigable system of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and a part of North Carolina, embracing about 5,000 miles of water easily navigated by vessels of light draught, used upon canals. These vessels would penetrate the streams and estuaries above referred to into almost every portion of these six StatesStates that produce the major portion of the cotton raised upon this conti

nent.

The census of 1870 shows that Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida - the States that will be directly affected by the construction of this canal - had an aggregate population of 3,074,455. These States produce 57,215,600 bushels of grain. Their average consumption, according to data furnished by the Bureau of Statistics, is 104,521,470 bushels. This leaves a deficit of 47,305,870 bushels to be supplied by other States. As the larger portion of this grain is needed along the seaboard, in what is known as the cotton belt, we may assume the distance from St. Louis to Savannah as the average distance it is moved. This would make the cost

of transporting each ton $14.40, at 1 cents per ton per mile.

These States produce 2682 hogsheads of sugar, 172,233,812 lbs. of rice, and 1,167,705 bales of cotton. The number of bales equals nearly half the cotton product of the United States. The value of the cotton crop of these

States exceeds $144,000,000.

The great need of this section is cheap food. Its soil and climate are not adapted to the production of grain, and the high prices of breadstuffs have retarded its development. The opening of the proposed canal will supply this need.

The census gives the average price of corn in these States at 97 cents per bushel, and wheat at $1.91. In many counties, and especially in the cotton belt, corn is seldom less than $1.50 per bushel, and often more than $2.00.

The scarcity of food, and the excessive prices demanded, force the tilling of more than 5,000,000 of acres in these States for grain. This takes away from the production of cotton about one-half the labor and capital of the South. These acres, planted in cotton, would add 2,500,000 bales to our export, and increase the value of that export about $200,000,000 annually, which would cause the wealth of the world to flow towards us, instead of away from us as it has been doing in times past.

To complete the last-named improvement, bringing with it all the advantages so clearly pointed out by Governor Smith of Georgia, in his late address to the entire nation, would not cost the United States Government one-fourth the amount that has heretofore been given by Congress to a single line of railroad.

For several reasons I should make at least some reference to another route: I mean the connection of the waters of the James and the Kanawha called the James River and Kanawha Canal. There are many pleasant memories connected with this great project. The idea of a connection by water of the navigable waters of the James with the navigable waters of the Ohio, and thereby with the whole Mississippi Valley, has for its author and earliest advocate a person no less distinguished than George Washington himself.

It appears that for years prior to the War of the Revolution this important project had occupied his serious consideration. His plan embraced a double connection between the waters of the Mississippi Valley and those of the Atlantic States: one by the Potomac River on the east, and the Monongahela on the west, to the point where Pittsburg now stands; and the other by the James River, on the east, and the Kanawha on the west, to the Ohio, at the mouth of the Kanawha, two hundred and eighty-four miles below Pittsburg.

If time permitted me to go into it, the whole history of this improvement would be exceedingly interesting. Of Washington it has been most appropriately said, that if he had left no other record of his statesmanship than his wise, but poorly followed up, efforts to secure to his native State the advantages and standing which nature intended for her, to the great benefit of the whole country, those alone would have placed him in the front rank of the wise and far-seeing statesmen of his age.

Up to the beginning of the year 1860 there had been completed of this work upon the original plan (the same as that of the Erie Canal before its enlargement) one hundred and ninety-seven miles from tidewater at Richmond to Buchanan, besides twenty-nine and one-half miles of lateral canal; and there had been expended in construction the sum of $11,785,455, besides the further sum of $3,034,845 of net earnings in the payment of annuities, interest, etc.

And now Virginia, all stricken with poverty as she is, but still true to her grand and noble instincts as when she gave to the United States the great Northwest Territory, embracing an empire within itself, proposes to turn over to the general Government, free of cost, this work of improvement upon the sole condition that it shall be completed.

Neither the enterprise of a single State, nor the united efforts of States impoverished by war, can accomplish these improvements. They require and demand assistance from the strong arm of the national Government, and being themselves national in character they should receive the requisite aid. The Pacific Railroad, the miracle of our country, would not have been built in half a century by relying alone upon individual effort or depending upon distant and sparsely populated States; but with the assistance derived