March 2, 1807, made his Report on Roads and Canals, constituting Document No. 250 of the first session of the 10th Congress and comprising nearly 200 folio pages on the roads and canals, constructed and proposed in the United States.

In this extended Report may be found a comprehensive review of the canals and canalized rivers of the United States then in operation and surveys, maps and estimates of many proposed canals. Among other things the Secretary says: "The general utility of artificial roads and canals is at this time so universally admitted, as hardly to require any additional proofs." After assigning various reasons why the General Government might alone undertake these vast public improvements, that were beyond the reach of private enterprise or State accomplishment, he continues:

"The early and efficient aid of the Federal Government is recommended by still more important considerations. The inconveniences, complaints, and perhaps dangers, which may result from a vast extent of territory, can not otherwise be radically removed or prevented than by opening speedy and easy communication through all its parts. Good roads and canals will shorten distance, facilitate commercial and personal intercourse, and unite, by a still more intimate community of interests, the most remote quarters of the United States. No other single operation, within the power of Government, can more effectually tend to strengthen and perpetuate that union which secures external independence, domestic peace, and internal liberty."

This broad and patriotic view, however, did not impress itself on Congress, as will be hereafter shown.

After describing several short canals in operation to overcome the rapids and falls in various rivers in the Atlantic States and the improvements proposed in other rivers and the various canals partially constructed or projected in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and the Carolinas, the Secretary presents surveys and estimates of the cost of construction of a canal between the Hudson river and Lake Champlain and between Oneida lake and the Hudson river via the Mohawk and Wood creek and between Oneida lake and

Lake Ontario and betweeen Lake Ontario and Lake Erie for sloop navigation.

The cost of the first of these canals was estimated to be $800,000, the second to be $2,200,000, and the third to be $1,000,000. The first two canals were to be 21⁄2 feet deep, 24 feet wide at the bottom and 32 feet wide at the top and admit boats of ten tons capacity. In this report may also be found a statement of the incorporated companies authorized by the several states to open up water communication in their respective territories, including the Western Inland Lock and Northern Inland Lock Navigation companies of New York and their existing stati.

The data relating to these companies were taken principally from the report of the Engineer, William Weston, to the directors of the Western and Northern Inland Lock Navigation companies under date of December 23, 1795, and the first Report of the Directors of the Western Inland Lock Navigation companies made to the Legislature under the date of November, 1795;1 and from the second Report of the directors of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company made to the Legislature on February 16, 1798; and from a Report of a Committee appointed by the Directors of the Northern Inland Lock Navigation Company under date of October 30, 1792; from communications of Thomas Eddy to Samuel Osgood, Esq., under date of October 29, 1807; from a report made by George Huntington to Secretary Albert Gallatin, under date of December 29, 1807; and from the original and supplemental Acts, under which these companies were organized. This report of the Secretary of the Treasury recommends an appropriation of $20,000,000, by the Federal Government, in annual installments of $2,000,000 each year for roads and canals, the major part of which was to be devoted to opening up water navigable communication in the several States considered. The research into the history and conditions of canals such as that connecting the Red and Mediterranean seas, through which passed the fleet of King Solomon to join that of Hiram, King of Tyre, to proceed to Ophir in search of

I. Both of these are printed in 2 Pubs. Buf. Hist. Soc.

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gold referred to by Herodotus and other historians; such as the Royal canal of Babylon, more than six hundred miles. in length; such as the Fossa Mariana built by the Romans for military purposes about 101 B. C. connecting the Rhone and the Mediterranean; such as the Roman canal connecting the Tiber and the sea; such as the Grand canal of China, soon to be cleared out and improved by imperial appropriation recently made, "which," it is said, "discharges itself on both sides into a great number of others," accommodating "the most part of the towns and villages" and answering "the conveniences of travellers and traffic" and other waterways, as well as the wealth of learning displayed in the argument of the general utility of artificial waterways, as established by the canals of Holland; by the Languedoc canal, 180 miles in length with its 114 locks and a prism 6 feet in depth and 30 feet wide at the bottom and 60 feet wide at the surface, connecting two seas; by the canal of the Duke of Bridgewater extending from Worsley to Manchester, and many others, and the breadth of view entertained by the projectors of these avenues of trade and travel, together with the copiousness of illustration, drawn from the Italian, Dutch and French sources, show that the captains of industry and statesmen of the period fully appreciated in national development the importance of an active commerce, in its enlarged sense, whereby "the world becomes as it were one single family."

Robert Morris in Pennsylvania was no less zealous than were General Philip Schuyler and Robert Fulton in New York or General George Washington in Virginia, who with many others left nothing unsaid to enlighten their countrymen and convince them of the advantages of transportation by water over any other method then known to man.

In Massachusetts there was in operation the Middlesex canal, 27 miles in length, connecting the Merrimac river with Boston harbor, 20 feet wide at the bottom and 3 feet depth of prism with 20 locks 75 feet in length and 10 feet wide, admitting of the passage of boats of 14 tons capacity, which cost $478,000, and was said to be "the best artificial naviga

tion in the United States." This was subsequently lengthened and enlarged. In 1807, Jesse Hawley, formerly engaged in mercantile business at Geneva, published under the nom de plume of "Hercules" a series of letters, most of which appeared in the Genesee Messenger, in advocacy of a direct overland water communication between Lake Erie and the Hudson. In these he calls attention to such canals as the Languedoc, the Kiel, the Clyde with its prism seven feet deep and with locks 75 feet long and 20 feet wide and to many others in successful operation in various parts of Europe. He discusses very intelligently the possibilities of internal waterborne commerce over the natural and proposed artificial waterways of the state and in such a manner as to challenge the attention of the people of the state and to arouse deep interest in the matter of canal construction in this State.

As early as 1808, inland navigation received legislative consideration in New York, when, on motion of Joshua Forman of Onondaga, the Assembly adopted a resolution providing that "a joint committee be appointed to consider the propriety of exploring and surveying the most eligible route between the Hudson river and Lake Erie to the end that Congress may be enabled to appropriate such sum as may be necessary to the accomplishment of the object" of effecting water communciation through the State between the Great Lakes and the sea, the sum of $600.00 was appropriated to enable the Surveyor-General "to cause an accurate survey to be made of the rivers, streams and water (not already actually surveyed) in the usual route of communication between the Hudson river and Lake Erie, and such other contemplated routes as he may deem proper." Judge Forman says: "So intent was the Surveyor-General on going through Lake Ontario, that he expended most of the money in exploring routes in that direction." The projectors of the system of inland waterways fully understood its importance and the prestige it would give the State, for in the preamble of the concurrent resolution, presented in the Assembly on March 27, 1808, by Hon. Thomas R. Gold of Oneida County, chairman of the Joint Legislative Com

mittee and adopted, are, inter alia, the following significant conclusions:

"In tracing the vestiges of ancient states, in whose councils munificence, guided by wisdom, presided, the remains of commercial improvement in public canals and other undertakings, make the advanced state of society, and will attest the empire of the arts of peace, while military achievement has shed lustre on Nations, works of public utility, tending to the happiness and welfare of society, record the exercise of superior virtues and afford monuments of true and lasting glory. Along the extended route of a contemplated canal from Hudson river through the waters of the Mohawk, and the intermediate lakes to Lake Erie, is presented to the eye of the traveller, a country unequaled for fertility, in so great extent, in any part of the United States, and not surpassed, it is believed, by the fairest regions of the Eastern World."

Prior to this, however, the attention of the Legislature had been called to various matters in relation to improvement of inland navigation, and in 1792, the Western and the Northern Inland Lock Navigation Companies, had been incorporated, but the expense of their respective undertakings was so great, that it was impossible to carry them to completion, and they were finally absorbed by the State in the construction of its artificial waterways.

Pursuant to the foregoing concurrent resolution, Mr. James Geddes made his first Report to the Surveyor-General of the State in 1809. It was accompanied by maps, engineering data and other information, communicated to the Legislature, setting forth the tentative routes and physical obstacles thereto as well as the benefits that would accrue from what Simeon De Witt, the Surveyor-General, in 1809, denominated "our grand canal."

VII. THE "GRAND" CANAL TAKES SHAPE.

The first Commissioners named in the concurrent resolutions of March 13 and 15, 1810, introduced in the Senate and ably supported by Jonas Platt, were Gouverneur Morris, Stephen Van Rensselaer, William North, De Witt Clinton, Thomas Eddy, Peter B. Porter and Simeon De Witt. They