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THOMPSON'S COAST PILOT. . Ia | tions that gave new life to commerce. The era of railways was com- | menced in about the year 1830, 3 'With these largely increased rail facilities, and the capacity of the New York canals nearly quadrupled, the augmenting facilities do not keep pace with the rapidly augmenting population and largely 3 increased production. Improved channels of communication, both : \ by rail and water, must be made, to enable the producer at the : West to get his products more cheaply to market. A country i vast in extent, bordering upon the Upper Mississippi, the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, Arkansas, Red, and Missouri rivers and their tributaries, and the Red river of the North, traversed by more than twenty thousand miles of navigable waters, will soon be densely peopled; new States to the west of those already admitted - will soon knock for admission into the Union; the superabundant products of an almost inexhaustible fertility will be pouring over the lakes and railways, and through the rivers and canals, imparting activity to trade, giving life, strength and vital energy to the largely augmenting commerce of the West. As the star of empire west- ward wends its way, widening the distance from the great sea-board marts of trade, the prospective wants and increased productions of scores of millions of people will from necessity create cheaper and _more expeditious facilities for the transportation of their surplus. products to market. There is no country on the face of the globe that has so many natural advantages for a large and extended internal trade as the Great West and Northwest. : «The great basin east of the Rocky Mountains is drained by the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and their tributaries, and their waters find an outlet in the Gulfof Mexico. The great lakes, having an area equal to one twenty-fifth part of the Atlantic Ocean, are drained by the River St. Lawrence, and find an outlet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The construction of a few miles of canal makesa navigable connection from the ocean to the great chain of lakes. These natural advantages have been improved to some extent in the United States, by the construction of a canal through the State of New York, that now has a prism forty-five feet at the bottom, and seventy feet at the top, with seven feet of water, with locks 18 feet 6 inches wide, by 100 feet long. There is also a canal one hundred