business of the great New York Central Railroad,
transporting annually over five million tons of cargo (which exceeds the
total foreign commerce of New York City), and yet is "choked" and gorged
with freight, the close figuring of the engineers does not appear to be
questionable.

The immense saving in the cost of water-carriage as compared with that
of railway-transportation is hardly conceived by the public mind. Many
of the railroads carry produce at very low and reasonable rates, but
they cannot afford to take it at much if any less than _three times the
amount_ charged by the canals. It appears from the report of the New
York State Engineer for 1868 that the average receipts per ton per mile
on the New York Central Railroad and the Erie Railway was 2.92 cents and
2.42 cents respectively; while on the New York State canals it was 1
cent only, tolls included. But a trans-Alleghany canal would, after
getting fully into operation, be able to transport produce more cheaply
than the New York canals, which are frozen over about five months of the
year, and during the very period when the great tide of Western
freightage and the ingathered crops is pressing most heavily for an
outlet to the East.[C] There are many products of the West and the
Mississippi Valley that will not bear the cost of transportation to the
Eastern cities, either by rail, Gulf or Lake route, because they would
consume _in transitu_ for freight between sixty and seventy per cent. of
their market value in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

These views have been ably and earnestly pressed time and again upon
Congress by Eastern and Western statesmen, merchants and citizens of all
classes, by the press of all parties, and by the boards of trade and
commercial conventions. The surveys cover every foot of the proposed
James River Canal extension to the Ohio Valley, which, by general
consent, seems to be regarded as the most eligible because it is the
most direct central route, and because the State of Virginia has most
munificently offered to remand the half-completed work to the general
government on the sole condition of its _nationalization_.

If, as history has always testified, it be true that

Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, which had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one,

it would be difficult, as it is unnecessary, even to attempt to form an
adequate estimate of this great trans-Allegh