intolerable, the project to build canals to Lake Erie met with generous
acclaim. A northward route, though it might be blocked by ice for a
few months each winter, had an additional value in the eyes of numerous
merchants whose wheat, sent in bulk to New Orleans, had soured either
in the long delay at Louisville or in the semi-tropical heat of the
Southern port.

The Ohio Legislature in 1822 authorized the survey of all possible
routes for canals which would give Ohio an outlet for its produce on
Lake Erie. The three wheat zones which have been mentioned were favored
in the proposed construction of two canals which, together, should
satisfy the need of increased transportation: the Ohio Canal to connect
Portsmouth on the Ohio River with Cleveland on Lake Erie and to traverse
the richest parts of the Scioto and Muskingum valleys, and to the west
the Miami Canal to pierce the fruitful Miami and Maumee valleys and join
Cincinnati with Toledo. De Witt Clinton, the presiding genius of the
Erie Canal, was invited to Ohio to play godfather to these northward
arteries which should ultimately swell the profits of the commission
merchants of New York City, and amid the cheers of thousands he lifted
the first spadefuls of earth in each undertaking.

The Ohio Canal, which was opened in 1833, had a marked effect upon the
commerce of Lake Erie. Before that date the largest amount of wheat
obtained from Cleveland by a Buffalo firm had been a thousand bushels;
but in the first year of its operation the Ohio Canal brought to the
village of Cleveland over a quarter of a million bushels of wheat, fifty
thousand barrels of flour, and over a million pounds of butter and lard.
In return, the markets of the world sent into Ohio by canal in this same
year thirty thousand barrels of salt and above five million pounds of
general merchandise.

Ever since the time when the Erie Canal was begun, Canadian statesmen
had been alive to the strong bid New York was making for the trade of
the Great Lakes. Their answer to the Erie Canal was the Welland Canal,
built between 1824 and 1832 and connecting Lake Erie with Lake Ontario
by a series of twenty-seven locks with a drop of three hundred feet in
twenty-six miles. This undertaking prepared the way for the subsequent
opening of the St. Lawrence canal system (183 miles) and of the Rideau
system by way of the Ottawa River (246 miles). There was thus provided
an ocean outlet to the north, although it was