hern New York. Last year, as late as the third of March, when the
vegetation of the Middle States was beginning to spring forth in vernal
beauty, the whole of the lower Lake region and Western and Northern New
York were swept by these Arctic tempests; and this is the climatic rule
rather than an exceptional case. Even in the season of open water the
Lakes are exposed to the most violent storms, and within their narrow
shores hundreds of vessels are annually lost. The mariner overtaken by
what would be a moderate gale in a broad sea is in imminent peril for
want of sea-room; and in a snow-storm, however light--whose winds
elsewhere he would court to fill his sails and propel his craft--his
course is beset with danger and difficulty. For more than half the year
navigation is suspended by the thickening terrors of the tempest and the
accumulated obstacles of ice.[B] And yet, with all the obstacles which
impair the utility of the Lake route while it is in operation, the
volume of Western produce prefers it, or rather is forced by the
necessities of the case to employ it. And these necessities will
continue to increase. With the aid of all the railroads now or to be
constructed, the rapid expansion of Western commerce has distanced the
facilities of transport. The iron horse, as has been well said, has
always stimulated industry and production beyond his power to carry it.
It was the forcible remark of the English traveler Sir Morton Peto that
the American railroads from West to East were "choked with traffic." So
great is the inadequacy of all existing outlets for conveying the more
than Amazonian streams of trans-Alleghany merchandise that it has long
since become the interest of every great corporation, as well as of
every citizen of the country, to open for them new and national
highways.

From this digression, embracing facts and views which seemed essential
to an intelligent discussion of the main subject, we pass on to examine
the Appalachian outlet by which the great Western empire of America may
find its way to the sea. The bird's-eye view here presented will show
the Appalachian mountain-chain, and the waters which thread their way
along its gentle slopes eastward to the Atlantic basin and westward to
the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. The Alleghanies bear a striking
geographic resemblance to the Highlands of Scotland, so famed in song
and story. Like the central Grampian Hills--those majestic buttresses in
whose re