The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

166 THOMPSON'S COAST PILOT. miles long, connecting the Illinois River with Lake Michigan at Chicago, and slack-water navigation connecting Green Bay, Wiscon- sin, with the Mississippi River. By the construction of a ship canal about three-fourths of a mile in length, from Big Stone Lake to Lake Traver, in Minnesota, steamboats from St. Paul could navigate both the Minnesota River and the Red River of the North, to Lake Win- nepeg, a distance of seven hundred miles. The country traversed by these rivers is surpassingly fertile, and capable of sustaining a dense population. Lake Winnepeg is larger than Lake Ontario, and re- ceives the Sas-katch-e-wan River from the west. The Sas-katch-e- wan River is navigable to a point (Edmonton House) near the Rocky Mountains, seven hundred miles west of Lake Winnepeg, and only | 150 miles east of the celebrated gold diggings on Frazer River, in British Columbia. The digging of that one mile of canal, would, therefore, enable a steamboat at New Orleans to pass into Lake Win- nepeg, from thence. to Edmonton House, some 5,000 miles. A move has already been made for constructing this short canal. By enlarg- ing the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and improving the navigation of the Illinois River, and improving and completing the slack-water navigation of the Fox River in Wisconsin, connecting Green Bay with the Mississippi River, and still further enlarging the main trunk of the New York Canals, steamers could be passed from New York _ or the Gulf of St. Lawrence, either through the canals of New York or Canada into the great lakes, and from thence to the head waters of the Sas-katch-e-wan, the Missouri, the Yellow Stoned Rivers, being some 5,000 to 6,000 miles. The cereal product of the States bord- ering on and tributary to the lakes was 267,295,877 bushels in1840; 434,862,661 bushels in 1850, against 679,031,559 bushels in 1860, and the population of these States has kept pace with their cereal products, being 6,259,345 in 1840; 9,178,003 in 1850, against 13,- 355,093 in 1860, an increase of nearly fifty per cent. in population and cereal. products in each decade. If the same rate per cent. of increase in population and cereal products shall be continued, these States in 1870 will have a population of 20,032,639, with a cereal product of 1,008,557,338 bushels; in 1880, a population of 30,048,- 958, with a cereal product of 1,512,821,000 bushels; in 1890, a population of 55,073,437, with a cereal product of 2,269,231,510