The cost of the canal hath been correctly calculated by Mr. John Randall, on data supplied, 1st. by Mr Samuel Young, one of the Canal Commissioners, of the prices for deep digging and excavating in the most difficult places on the internal canals; prices very much reduced since by the improvement of the art of canalling, and much superior to what they would be on an alluvial bed in general very easy to work. 2d. On data supplied by Mr. Hooker, surveyor and architect of the city of Albany, for the price of the works of art that the canal would require. From which data, Mr. Randall hath ascertained, by the most attentive calculations, that the whole canal complete, including the expense of a steam pump, to drain the intruding water during the excavations, would not exceed $661,559. A sum about equal to the money already spent in the bed of the river for useless improvements, and vastly inferior to what the plans presented by Colonel Clinton would cost when completed as far as the transfer of the alluvial matter, to places enjoying now a good navigation, which transfer would legally require an extension of the improvement recommended by that engineer, amounting to $221,504, to procure hypothetically a depth of only 9 feet, in an undetermined width.

It hath been thought proper, however, to apply to the Legislature for a capital of $800,000, with the privilege of extending it to a million of dollars, in case of error; or to provide means for the establishment of steam ice-stampers and night-lights.

It now remains to shew, that setting aside the public utility of the contemplated canal, it will not be an indifferent or an unprofitable object of speculation, notwithstanding the most absolute freedom of the waters of the river, through the seat of the alluvions, and notwithstanding the full enjoyment of the overslaughs, of the freshets, of the contrary tides, head winds, low water, floating and permanent ice, to all those who will prefer the uses of those inherent and undisputed privileges, to a speedy, punctual and improved navigation for vessels of all description. (3.)

A few facts will be sufficient to prove that the superior advantages of the canal over the obstructed part of the river, leave no doubt on the preference which the canal will command, without any compulsion of law. In the first place, the shallowness of the river in her obstructed section, confines the vessels employed in the navigation of the places situated along those obstructions, to a peculiar flat-bottomed construction, which puts them upon a very unequal

footing, in point of sailing, with the sharper built and more expeditious sailers from the places below; a disadvantage which the canal would enable the first to overcome, and in which they would not persevere.

In the second place, it is well known that the tides ebb and flow alternately, and that either in going up or down the river, one-half of the navigating time is lost for the sailing vessels, by the impossibility of beating against the tides or the winds, through the narrow channels contracted by the overslaughs or by the dams; a fact which is strongly supported by the comparative tables drawn by the scientific Doctor T. Romeyn Beck, from observations made at the Albany academy; which tables shew that on an average of six years, the wind hath blown

So that the present river navigators, who are not as fond of laying at anchor as the river skippers of olden times, would undoubtedly also give the preference to the canal, practicable by day, by night, and during the thickest fogs.

In the third place, while the ice floating or dammed up by the pretended improvements in the river, or consolidated as far as the deep waters, would lay an embargo on all navigation on the river, the canal during those periods, kept free of floating ice, and containing nothing but fragments of ice pounded by the ice-stamper, would open a free communication as far as its outlet, where generally the navigation remains uninterrupted a fortnight earlier, and a fortnight later than through the whole extent of the obstructions; and sometimes, as it hath been the case the last years, during a much longer period in the spring, when the dams have retained mountains of accumulated ice obstinately seated.

In the fourth place, it is a lamentable fact, but unfortunately it is one too well ascertained, that the proper waters of the Hudson, diminish rapidly; and that the dams, by their contracting operation, reduce the influx of the tides, which would replenish for a

while that depression: and it is obvious accordingly, that in times of droughth, when the tides and the waters are low, as the flattest bottomed vessels would in vain attempt, by force of wind or steam to work their passage through impervious shoals, the canal in those cases, now very frequent, would also have the preference.

Therefore, if it is admitted that the tonnage employed on the river between the northern markets and New-York, which by accurate statements, amounted in the year 1818, before the completion of the canals and the great increase of the steam navigation, to 21,000 tons, amounts now to 50,000. And if it is also admitted on the strength of the facts above stated, that one-half only of the managers of that tonnage would prefer the ship canal to the overslaugh, and would perform each not more than 15 trips,(4,) or thirty passages in a season, it will be evident that at the very low rate of toll of one cent per mile per ton, exclusively of the additional tonnage which the accession of the Atlantic navigation would procure; exclusively of the relative increase of trade and trips, and exclusively of the accessory charges for towing the vessels and breaking the ice, the receipts would amount to 97,750 dollars; leaving a surplus of 27,750 dollars, above the interest of one million of dollars, at 7 per cent per annum: An income which, alone, would render perfectly safe and profitable, investments of public and private funds, in the stock of the Ship Canal Company; and would justify a constitutional appropriation of national funds by Congress, liberal loans or investments by the State, and well calculated contributions from those who are interested in the prosperity of our great central emporium, either as landholders, merchants, manufacturers, mechanics or agriculturists, from the shores of the Hudson to the remotest parts of the State, and as far as internal navigation extends on our mediterranean seas.

Prospect-Hill, January 15, 1833.

E. C. GENET.

NOTES.
(1.)

On the formation of the alluvions at the head of the tide waters of the Hudson river, and the diminution of the water in that river.

Without reascending to the geological history of the primitive state of this part of the American continent, to discover at what epoch the waters of the ocean were rolling on its surface, and when they burst through their Appalachian barrier and uncovered the soil which we now inhabit, suffice it to say, in reference to the subject of this memorial, that as soon as that great revolution hsd subsided, the Hudson river was on this side of the Highlands, several miles wider than it now is; that she hath experienced progressively, a reduction in the collection of her aqueous supplies, and that the Atlantic influx, maintaining its ascendency hath at each tide, checked the descent of alluvial matter and confined it to the present seat of the obstructions, which by its total want of geodesic declivity hath baffled all the attempts made to remove those increasing alluvial deposits, by excavation and contraction. It hath been remarkably the case at the principal bar called the Overslaugh, where a longitudinal dam of about a mile long on the west side of the river, and the Papsknee island on the opposite side, contract the channel more than in any other part of the river, where the mud turtles of Albany have been constantly at work; and where, notwithstanding the contraction operating as much in favor of the ascending tide as in favor of the descending current, a perfect nullification of the two opposite forces takes place, of which the settlement of the alluvial matter which the freshets contain is the inevitable consequence.

But it is not the formation of the alluvious alone, which injures the navigation of the Hudson; there is another cause; it is a very sensible diminution of the proper waters of that river: a growing and very alarming evil, which may be attributed to a considerable absorption of her former feeders, by the Erie and Champlain canals, and to the clearing of the land contiguous. Trees seem to be, by an hydrovegetal attraction, the conductors and condensers of the dampness which supplies the springs and rivulets, while their roots bind together the soil upon which they grow, and prevent on the side hills its disintegration: but when these old inhabitants of the primitive forests have fallen under the axe of the agriculturist, the dampness drawn and retained by them on the surface of the earth evaporates, the springs dry up, the rivulets cease to flow into the larger creeks, and the particles of the soil let loose, are washed away by the rains and carried by the freshets into the river, where meeting a powerful resistance from the spring tides, the force which propelled them is annulled, and the law of gravity assuming its course, the drifted matter seeks instantly the centre

of the earth and settles down, either on the old alluvions or into new ones, which the hydrostatic pressure of the incumbent column of water soon consolidates into a hard-pan, very fatal to the buckets of the excavators, otherwise called mud turtles.

If the tides could be stopped, if a descent could be procured through the seat of the alluvions to create an operative current; if the former feeders of the Hudson could be withdrawn from the State canals; if the primitive forests which covered the lands adjoining those water ways could be replanted; and if the irrational dams, so expensively constructed in the river, could be removed to open a wider entrance to the influx of the tides, perhaps the navigation in the obstructed part could be in some degree improved for sloops and steam-boats; but until then, nothing but a lateral canal can offer a permarent and efficient water communication between New-York and our great central markets for vessels of all descriptions, and prevent the approaching ruin of those flourishing places.

(2.)

On the law of navigable rivers.

The public law on navigable rivers rests entirely on natural law and on the laws of nature, and those two principles are so intimately connected by the ancient and modern legislators, that they cannot be separated without subverting the whole system. Whatever alterations nature operated in rivers was considered by the first civilized nations as the work of God, and was held sacred and unalterable. Therefore, by the laws of the Romans, it was established as a general principle, that no one had a right to complain of what a river took away, or to dispute what she gave by accretion or dereliction from or to the adjoining shores, provided it was not operated by the works of men. The Roman law, as expressed in the digest, S. 214, 43, 15, was on that account very strict with respect to buildings and constructions of any kind in the bed of a river, and required that ample security, during a period of ten years, should be given, that any such work should not injure private or public rights. It is on that principle, and several high authorities under the common law, that Mr. Thomas Jefferson, in his defence of the government of the United States, in the case of La Batture at New-Orleans, hath maintained, "That it is not lawful to alter or divert the natural course of a navigable river, either by contracting or dilating it." The late Chief Justice and Chancellor of this State, the learned James Kent, hath also contended, in the case of Palmer vs. Mulligan, "that no current water can be altered from its natural course by the laws of men, the right to those waters being derived from the law of nature," called by Bacon the law of laws. That sacred law is also the main foundation of the laws of several modern nations on alluvions and rivers, which would be