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164 THOMPSON'S COAST PILOT. 129; and at the end of the year 1862, the population is estimated at over 100,000, In 1817 the taxable property of the village was $134,400, and on this valution an assessment of $400 was made during that year. The valuation of the real and personal property of the city in 1862 was $30,911,014. «'The population and valuation of property, the harbor and har- bor improvements, the manufactures and commerce, the canal, rail- way, and water connections, by lake, with other portions of the country, the population and productions of the West and North- west, the large lake, canal, and railway facilities for transportation at the present time, when compared with what they were fifty years: ago, 'are marvelous in our eyes,' and if some far-seeing mind, a half century since, had prophesied results of such vast magnitude, he would have been denominated an idle dreamer, and a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. «The States and Territories bordering on, ad tributary to 'es great lake basin that had fifty years ago but a few thousand popula- tion, have now nearly seven millions, which will soon be augmented. by the natural increase, and by immigration to thirty millions, and Buffalo, with its 500 inhabitants in 1811, 81,000 in 1860, will have a population of three or four hundred thousand before the present century shall have passed away. Within the limits of these lake States, where, less than forty years ago, there were neither canals nor railways, there are now 14,484 miles of railway, and 3,345 miles of navigable canals, of which latter about 760 miles are slack-water navigation. | "The whole West and Northwest is now traversed by a net- work of railways, with important canal connections between the dif- ferent States, where there was a sparsely populated, almost intermin- able forest or uninhabited prairie. In this march of improvement, making more intimate the social and commercial relations of these widely separated sections of the country, the Empire State has nobly led the way. The far-seeing mind of her honored son, Governor Clinton, projected the Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, uniting the waters of the Hudson with the lakes. A brighter day then dawned upon the West, the population was rapidly augmented, which was soon succeeded by largely increased agricultural produc-