ld be enormous. So highly thought of is the Kanawha cannel coal that
it is now shipped down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans,
and sent thence by sea to New York, where it brings per ton about three
times the price of anthracite in that market. It is equal to the best
English and Nova Scotia cannel, while the Kanawha bituminous and splint
coals are unsurpassed by any others. The veins lie horizontally, and
vary from three to fifteen feet in thickness, the aggregate thickness of
the various strata amounting in some localities to forty or fifty feet
of the solid carbon.

But, great as are the local interests and the trade of the water-line,
they are entirely lost sight of in the national aspect of the question.

The population now demanding a direct and central highway for its great
inland commerce, according to the best estimates (those of Poor), cannot
fall short of fifteen millions, and most probably exceeds that number.
It is now conclusively established that the centre of gravity of our
national population has crossed the Appalachian chain. Professor Hilgard
of the Coast Survey prepared a year ago, at the request of the Hon. J.
A. Garfield of Ohio, a series of calculations to ascertain this centre
of gravity by the four last censuses. Supposing a plane of the exact
shape and size of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, loaded with
the actual population, he determined the points on which it would
balance. In the recently-published words[E] of Mr. Garfield we give the
following results of Professor Hilgard's calculations: By this process
he found that in 1840 the centre of gravity of the population was at a
point in Virginia near the eastern foot of the Appalachian chain, and
near the parallel of 39 deg. N. latitude. In 1850 this centre had moved
westward fifty-seven miles across the mountains, to a point nearly south
of Parkersburg, Virginia. In 1860 it had moved westward eighty-two
miles, to a point nearly south of Chillicothe, Ohio. In 1870 it had
reached a point near Wilmington, Clinton county, Ohio, about forty-five
miles north-east of Cincinnati. In no case had it widely departed from
the thirty-ninth parallel. If the same rate be maintained during the
next three decades, which I doubt, it will fall in the neighborhood of
Bloomington, Indiana, by 1900. Professor Hilgard also found that a line
drawn from Lake Erie, at the north-eastern corner of Ohio, to Pensacola
in Florida, would divide the popul