aqueducts, and of 28 of the 72 locks required on the eastern section, are comprehended in the estimated or actual cost of the 48 miles of canal extending below the "Point of Rocks." Two other causes have powerfully contributed to swell the expenses of the work already executed. The usual ill health, for a certain season of every year, of the valley of the Potomac, below the Kitoctin mountain, and the competition for labor on the canal with two works, the Baltimore and Ohio rail road, and the Susquehannah and Juniata canal of Pennsylvania-one approaching very near, and the other not one hundred miles distant from, the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. Both causes have conspired, for two years past, to raise the wages of ordinary labor very far beyond the price anticipated when the estimates of the Washington Convention were made. One of these causes will, in a great measure, cease, after the canal shall have ascended the Potomac to the healthy country about the "Point of Rocks," and the final completion of the great State canal of Pennsylvania will shortly limit the operation of the other. Without taking into account the probable reduction of the price of materials and subsistence, as well as of the wages of labor, in the more fruitful country above the Kitoctin mountain, your memorialists are sustained, as well by experience, as by comparison of the relative difficulties that were to be encountered by the canal below and above the Blue Ridge, in computing the cost of the first 60 miles, between Georgetown and Harper's Ferry, at more than a third of the entire expense of the eastern section. For the twelve miles of this distance immediately below Harper's Ferry, not already placed under contract, they rely on the frequently repeated estimates of practical engineers, corrected by a reference to the cost of that part of the remaining 48 miles actually placed under contract, and either completed or very nearly so. Neither of these 12 miles, nor any part of the 126 miles above them, present obstacles more difficult to surmount than those which have been successfully encountered on the part of the eastern section about to be finished. They comprehend but a single dam across the river Potomac, where it is much narrower than at the feeders already constructed at Seneca and the Little Falls, and but three lift locks in addition to the 28 below the "Point of Rocks." Assuming, therefore, the present enlarged plan of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal as the permanent basis of the dimensions of the entire work, and computing the total cost of the eastern section at thrice the cost of the 60 miles above Georgetown, between four millions and a half and five millions of dollars will be the probable amount required to reach Cumberland. From this estimate, the work within Georgetown is excluded, under a conviction that the mole and basin within that town will repay all the expenses incurred there, except of the locks; as these, however, would have been required to descend to the tide, had the canal stopped above the town, they are comprehended in the estimate. Of the four and a half or five millions so required, there millions six hundred and ten thousand dollars have been already subscribed, in the proportions of one million by the United States, a million and a half by the District cities, half a million by the State of Maryland, and six hundred and ten thousand dollars by private individuals, leaving the residue to be yet provided. Of this residue your memorialists have always expected to receive at least seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars from that State which is most deeply in cavation and embankment, constituting together more than a moiety of the Having thus completed one half of the portion of the canal between the western extreme of the summit level and Pittsburg, there will remain but 27 miles of the other moiety of this distance to be provided for, in order to reach the mouth of Casselman's river, a point, on the line of the canal, in the vicinity of the Cumberland road, and, by the route of that road, about 44 miles from Cumberland, the termination of the eastern section of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal-by the route surveyed for the canal, about 67 milesthirty-one of which lie between the mouth of Casselman's river and the western basin of the summit level. It is apparent, therefore, that there will be several stages of the work where a pause may be made in its prosecution, without the loss of benefit, from the portion of it which will have been completed. To this view may be superadded the highly important consideration, that the part which will have been accomplished will afford increased facilities for the more speedy and economical construction of the residue, and in the interim will contribute, by its profit, to the general revenue of the company. Your memorialists, having explained the motives which prompted the adoption of a plan of such enlarged dimensions for the eastern section of the canal, in order to obviate objections to the immediate commencement of the western section, beg leave to return to the estimate of the probable cost of the former. With a view of showing the competency of the funds, on which a reliance has been hitherto had, for the completion of this section of the canal, they proceed to demonstrate, or to render probable at least, the truth of thair statement as to the proportion which the cost of the part of this section now under contract, being that to the east of the "Point of Rocks," may be expected to bear to the greater portion, extending to the west of that point, and east of Cumberland, along which their progress has been obstructed. For this purpose, they present the following considerations: Not only have the provisions hitherto consumed on the canal been transported a considerable distance, but nearly all the hydraulic lime for its costly aqueducts and its numerous locks and culverts has been obtained from the New York canals, or from the Potomac quarries near Shepherdstown, about 25 miles west of the "Point of Rocks," by an obstructed navigation, sometimes doubling its prime cost at the kilns on the river shore. Much of the stone for this masonry has been alike transported by an obstructed navigation, and no small part of it by land, for great distances and at great expense. Two damsone, of them exceeding half a mile in length, have been required across the widest part of the Potomac, to force the water of that river into the necessary feeders: and the expense of their construction, as well as of two considerableTM That of 7 archies across the Monocacy, computed to cost 100,000 dollars, and that of across the Seneca, not less than 23,000 dollars. 1 aqueducts, and of 28 of the 72 locks required on the eastern section, are comprehended in the estimated or actual cost of the 48 miles of canal extending below the "Point of Rocks.” Two other causes have powerfully contributed to swell the expenses of the work already executed. The usual ill health, for a certain season of every year, of the valley of the Potomac, below the Kitoctin mountain, and the competition for labor on the canal with two works, the Baltimore and Ohio rail road, and the Susquehannah and Juniata canal of Pennsylvania-one approaching very near, and the other not one hundred miles distant from, the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. Both causes have conspired, for two years past, to raise the wages of ordinary labor very far beyond the price anticipated when the estimates of the Washington Convention were made. One of these causes will, in a great measure, cease, after the canal shall have ascended the Potomac to the healthy country about the "Point of Rocks," and the final completion of the great State canal of Pennsylvania will shortly limit the operation of the other. Without taking into account the probable reduction of the price of materials and subsistence, as well as of the wages of labor, in the more fruitful country above the Kitoctin mountain, your memorialists are sustained, as well by experience, as by comparison of the relative difficulties that were to be encountered by the canal below and above the Blue Ridge, in computing the cost of the first 60 miles, between Georgetown and Harper's Ferry, at more than a third of the entire expense of the eastern section. For the twelve miles of this distance immediately below Harper's Ferry, not already placed under contract, they rely on the frequently repeated estimates of practical engineers, corrected by a reference to the cost of that part of the remaining 48 miles actually placed under contract, and either completed or very nearly so. Neither of these 12 miles, nor any part of the 126 miles above them, present obstacles more difficult to surmount than those which have been successfully encountered on the part of the eastern section about to be finished. They comprehend but a single dam across the river Potomac, where it is much narrower than at the feeders already constructed at Seneca and the Little Falls, and but three lift locks in addition to the 28 below the "Point of Rocks." Assuming, therefore, the present enlarged plan of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal as the permanent basis of the dimensions of the entire work, and computing the total cost of the eastern section at thrice the cost of the 60 miles above Georgetown, between four millions and a half and five millions of dollars will be the probable amount required to reach Cumberland. From this estimate, the work within Georgetown is excluded, under a conviction that the mole and basin within that town will repay all the expenses incurred there, except of the locks; as these, however, would have been required to descend to the tide, had the canal stopped above the town, they are comprehended in the estimate. Of the four and a half or five millions so required, there millions six hundred and ten thousand dollars have been already subscribed, in the proportions of one million by the United States, a million and a half by the District cities, half a million by the State of Maryland, and six hundred and ten thousand dollars by private individuals, leaving the residue to be yet provided. Of this residue your memorialists have always expected to receive at least seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars from that State which is most deeply in terested in this work, by the extensive inland navigation and commerce which she has dependent on its completion. This expectation remains unimpaired by the delay which has hitherto disappointed its fruition, since that may be ascribed, it is confidently believed, to causes transitory in their nature. For any deficiency of this sum which may remain to be supplied, it is supposed that an appeal might, at any time, be successfully addressed to private liberality, and to those local interests immediately involved in the completion of this great national undertaking. In this view of the resources, present and future, of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, no reliance, it will be seen, is had, for the completion of the eastern section of the canal, on a further application for pecuniary aid to the Congress of the United States. For the mountain or middle section, over which the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company are authorized to construct either inclined planes or a continued canal, your memorialists have, however, never ceased to indulge the confident hope of assistance from that Government which, created for the purposes of union and commerce, cannot be insensible to the claims of both upon the vigorous exercise of its powerful energies, to remove every impediment to the easy intercourse of the Atlantic and Western States through the centre of their common territory. A plan for effecting this desirable object has already received the approbation of your memorialists, and is sustained, as they are advised, by a large roportion of your honorable body. (App. K.) Should it succeed, there will main to be provided for but that portion of the western section of the nal between the Alleghany mountain and Pittsburg; and for that portion, the present appeal is most respectfully addressed to the enlightened patriotism of the Representatives of the States and people of America. Should the western section of the canal be retarded in its progress from Pittsburg towards Cumberland, by a suspension of it, for any considerable period, at any one of the points suggested above; should it, for example, be prosecuted no further than the mouth of Casselman's river, it will even there have arrived within a few miles of the national road, which already connects the Youghiogany at Smithfield with the Potomac at Cumberland. Through the application of the various mineral treasures, apart from the productions of the agriculture and the forests of the country between Smithfield and Pittsburg, a part of the resources for the completion of this section would be speedily developed by the canal itself. It is, therefore, believed that, if a subscription be authorized by Congress for this purpose, to the extent of a single million, it will elicit a capital sufficient to defray the cost of all this central communication, except its summit level, and the descending planes or locks, which are designed to connect it with the lines of continuous canal stretching to the east and west from the base of the Alleghany mountain. To open through this great barrier an easy avenue of trade and intercourse to millions, born and unborn, is of itself a work of such magnitude as to require it to be commenced on a plan of suitable dimensions, and with adequate resources for its steady prosecution and speedy completion. It is for this Government to sanction the one, since it is probable that it is alone competent to provide the other. Your memorialists forbear, for the present, to enlarge upon this topic, and should here close the appeal which they have presumed to make to the wisdom of Congress in behalf of the western section of the canal, if they were not expressly called upon by a report of an enlightened committee of the House of Representatives to consider and remove, if possible, an objection to their whole enterprise. To the memorials of the numerous citizens of Pennsylvania who have prayed for the aid of the General Government towards the construction of the western section of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, the Committee on Internal Improvements, to whom these memorials were referred at an early stage of the present session of Congress, have replied, "that they duly appreciate the great and national importance of a communication between the western waters and the navigable waters of the Chesapeake bay, as is manifested in their report of the 19th of February, 1830, on the memorial of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company." The committee further state that, actuated by the same "desire, of affording to the Government a satisfactory experiment upon which it can decide whether a preference ought to be given to a canal or rail road, as the mode of conveyance over the mountains, they deem it inexpedient, at present, to make the appropriations, as the western communication, in the opinion of the committee, should correspond with the one leading over the mountains." Such, the undersigned beg leave to remark, has not been the course of Pennsylvania, who is proceeding to connect, by a rail road of about 40 miles across the Alleghany, her Conemaugh and Juniata canals; nor that of the Hudson and Delaware Canal Company, who combine a railway of 11 miles, overcoming an elevation and descent of 1700 feet, with a canal exceeding in length one hundred miles, in order to reach the Lackawaxen coal mines and the North river; nor of the "Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company," who, for a similar purpose, have connected a canal and still water navigation of 47 miles on the Lehigh, with a rail road of 9 miles, between Easton, on the Delaware, and Mauch Chunk. This last mentioned work overcomes by its railway a descent of more than 700 feet, and has, in a distance of 47 miles of mixed navigation, 42 lift locks, 5 guard locks, and 7 dams. The use, moreover, of its railway long preceded, in point of time, the commencement of its canal. The undersigned aver that, at no period whatever, either before or since the prosecution of the great enterprise in which they are engaged, have they been unmindful of the progress of the science of internal improvement either in Europe or America. Apart from the sudden, and, to them, most unexpected opposition of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company, to the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal along the route so frequently surveyed, and so long appropriated to its use, and by so many indications of public opinion, every motive of personal interest, as well as of public duty, prompted the friends of the latter to institute a just comparison between those rival modes of internal commu nication. While the first proceedings of the founders of the rival enterprise of Baltimore disclosed the grounds of their preference of a communication with the west by a direct rail road, rather than by the indirect course of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, along the winding valley of the Potomac, the friends of the latter had no motive to deceive themselves or others. If such a communication were likely to supersede the use of the canal, while the former kept its avowed direction, and could not possibly interfere with the latter, the undersigned had not the power to arrest its progress, had they even felt or manifested the disposition. They, accordingly, consulted all the information which the essays of scientific writers, or the actual experience of Europe |