THE LAKES.

Heretofore the various districts of collection have been presented separately, with such statistics as were attainable and deemed necessary, in regard to their respective trade, tonnage, local resources, avenues and outlets for external communication, and for the facilities of exporting and importing produce, merchandise, &c.

In many cases, however, the establishment of the districts being arbitrary, to suit the conveniences of the custom-house, and founded neither on geographical position, nor territorial limits of States-so that at one time characteristics the most different are presented in one and the same district, and at another many adjacent districts possess identically the same qualities and facilities-it has been judged best, with a view to presenting a general and comprehensible synopsis of the various regions, with their several interests, trades, improvements, and requirements of farther improvement, to give a cursory sketch of this most interesting region, lake by lake; and thereafter to collect the whole lake country, with its interests, and influence on the cities of the Atlantic coast, and on the increase, wealth, and well-being of the confederacy at large, into one brief summary.

Commencing, therefore, from the easternmost terminus of the lake country proper, and proceeding in due order westward, the first to be mentioned is,

LAKE CHAMPLAIN.

This lake lies between the States of Vermont and New York, on the east and west, and for a small distance, at the northern end, within the British province of Canada East. It is about 110 miles in length from north to south, and varies in width from half a mile to 14 miles, with a depth of water varying from 54 to 282 feet. Its principal feeders are the outlet of Lake George, at Ticonderoga, the rivers Saranac, Chazy, Au Sable, Missisquoi, Winooski, and Wood and other creeks. Its outlet is by the Sorel, Richelieu, or St. John's river, into the St. Lawrence, some 45 miles below Montreal.

The New York and Vermont shores of this lake are of a character the most opposite imaginable, that to the eastward being for the most part highly cultivated, fertile, and well settled, with grazing and dairy farms, furnishing supplies for a thriving business in produce; while the counties of New York to the westward, wild, rocky, barren, and rising into vast mountains intersected by lakes, with little or no bottom lands and intervales, sends down lumber and iron in vast quantities; above ten thousand tons of iron ore, nine thousand of bloom and bar, and nearly three thousand of pig-iron, having passed down the lake and entered the Champlain canal in 1851.

There is, moreover, a large lumber trade, partially from Canada, passing down this lake and canal, to the amount last year of 116 millions of feet.

The whole value of the commerce of Lake Champlain was, for 1846, about eleven millions; for 1847, seventeen; and for 1851, above twenty

six millions of dollars. Its licensed tonnage for the same year was 8,130. The avenues and outlets of this lake trade are the Chambly canal, and Sorel river improvements, to the St. Lawrence river, affording a free navigation up or down the lakes from the Sault Ste. Marie to the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and the Champlain canal, uniting at Waterford with the Erie canal and Hudson river, and thence giving access to the port of New York and the Atlantic ocean; the Ogdensburg railroad, from a fine port on the St. Lawrence, crossing the upper end of the lake, to Burlington, where it makes a junction with the Rutland and Vermont Central railroads, and so proceeds to Boston and the eastern harbors of the Atlantic; and the Whitehall railroad by Ballston to Troy, whence it has communication, via the Harlem and Hudson river railroads, with the city of New Yorkvast facilities for transportation, to which may be added all the advantages for vessels ascending the lakes, and coasting, possessed individually by each of the regions lying above it, on the St. Lawrence basin.

LAKE ONTARIO.

This lake is 180 miles in length by 40 miles in average width; its mean depth is 500 feet, its height above the sea 232, and its area 6,300 square miles; its principal affluent is the outlet of the superfluous waters of all the great upper lakes, by the Niagara Falls and river.

Its only tributaries of any consequence are, from the Canadian side the Trent and Credit, and from the State of New York the Black river, the Oswego, and the Genesee. Its natural outlet is by the channel of the St. Lawrence, through the thousand isles, and down a steep descent, broken by many rapids and chutes, to Montreal; and thence without further difficulty to the ocean.

The shores of this lake on both sides, but more especially on the southern or New York coast, combine perhaps the most populous, thicklysettled, and productive agricultural regions of the United States, interspersed at every few miles of length by fine and flourishing towns, and beautiful villages, resting upon a wheat country-that of Genesee-inferior to few in the world for the productiveness of its soil, and the quality of its grain; and a fruit or orchard country not easily surpassed. It has also, bordering on its southern shore, the most valuable and largely exploited salt district of the United States; while all the regions adjoining it possess rare advantages in their admirable system of internal communication, and especially in the Erie canal, running nearly parallel to the lake, through their whole length for a distance of three hundred and sixty-three miles from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to Albany, on the Hudson river. The abundant water-power afforded by the rivers falling into this side of the lake is turned to much profit for the flouring both of domestic and imported grain, for transhipment by canal for New York and the Atlantic harbors.

The avenues and outlets of the lake are as follows:

It is united with Lake Erie by the Welland canal, round the Falls of Niagara, capable of admitting vessels of twenty-six feet beam, one hundred and thirty feet over all, and nine feet draught-the heaviest that can be carried across the flats of Lakes St. Clair above, and St.

Peters below-and equal to the stowage of three thousand barrels under deck.

With the Gulf of St. Lawrence it has communication by the Lachine, Beauharnois, Cornwall, and Williamsburg canals, of superior capacity even to those on the Welland, constructed to admit the large lake steamboats plying between Montreal, Kingston, and Ogdensburg. Besides these, it has the Oswego canal, falling into the Erie canal at Syracuse; and the Ogdensburg and the Oswego and Syracuse railways, uniting with the Albany and Buffalo, Great Western, Hudson river, and Vermont system of railways, having ramifications through all the New England States, and opening up to it free access to all the more important harbors on the Atlantic.

In addition to these direct outlets, it of course incidentally possesses all those opening from Lake Champlain.

The value of the commerce of this lake for 1851 amounted to about thirty millions, and its licensed tonnage to thirty-eight thousand tons. The first steamer was launched on this lake in 1816.

LAKE ERIE.

This lake, which lies between 41° 22′ and 42° 52′ N. latitude, and 78° 55′ and 83° 23′ W. longitude, is elliptical in shape; about 265 miles in length, 50 average breadth, 120 feet mean depth, and 565 feet above tide-water; 322 above the level of Lake Ontario, 52 below that of Lakes Huron and Michigan; being the shallowest, and, of consequence, most easily frozen, of all the great lakes.

Lake Erie is singularly well situated with regard to the soil, character, and commercial advantages of the countries circumjacent to its waters; having at its eastern and southeastern extremity the fertile and populous plains of western New York; west of this, on the southern shore, a portion of Pennsylvania, and thence to the river Maumee, at the western extremity of the lake, the whole coast-productive almost beyond comparison-of Ohio, containing the beautiful and wealthy cities of Cleveland, Sandusky, and Toledo. On the west it is bounded by a portion of the State of Michigan, and on the north by the southern shore of the rich and highly cultivated peninsula of Canada West-undoubtedly the wealthiest and best farmed district of the Canadian province, and settled by an energetic, industrious, and inteliigent population, mostly of North of England extraction and habit, and differing as widely as can be conceived from the French and Irish agriculturists of the lower colony.

The whole of the country around Lake Erie is, to speak in general terms, level, or very slightly rolling, with a deep, rich, alluvial soil, covered in its natural state with superb forests of oak, maple, hickory, black walnut, and in certain regions pine, and producing under cultivation magnificent crops of wheat, corn, barley, and oats, besides feeding annually vast multitudes of swine and beef-cattle for the eastern, provincial, and transatlantic marts. No equal amount of land, perhaps, on the face of the globe, contains fewer sterile or marshy tracts, or more soil capable of high cultivation and great productiveness, than this region as is already evidenced by its large agricultural exports; and

when it is considered that the portions under cultivation are as yet comparatively a small part of the whole, while none has probably been yet brought to the utmost limit of profitable culture, what it may one day become, is as yet wholly incalculable.

This lake has few islands, and these principally toward the western end; but on the northern shores it has three considerable promontories-Long Point, Landguard Point, and Point au Pelè-which do not, however, afford much shelter to shipping.

The tributaries of this lake are: From Canada the Grand river, a stream of considerable volume, with fine water-power, having at its mouth the harbor of Port Maitland, probably the best on the whole lake, and the only one worthy of note on the Canada side. From New York it receives the Cattaraugus creek, and the Buffalo creek, at the outlet of which is the flourishing city and fine harbor of Buffalo. From Ohio it is increased by the waters of the Maumee, Portage, Sandusky, Vermillion, Black, Cuyahoga, Grand, Ashtabula, and Conneaut rivers, and by those of the Elk and some other small streams from Pennsylvania. Infinitely its largest and most important affluent is, however, the wide and deep river of Detroit, which, flowing down—with a rapid stream and mighty volume of water-a descent of 52 feet in some 60 miles, pours into it the accumulated surplus of the three mighty lakes above it, and all their tributary waters.

Its natural outlet is the Niagara river, which, with an average width of three quarters of a mile and a depth of forty feet, descends, in about 35 miles, 322 feet over the foaming rapids and incomparable cataract of Niagara, which of course prevents the possibility of navigation or flotation down the stream, though it is crossed at several points by ferries of various kinds.

Lake Erie, however, is connected with Ontario by the Welland canal, a noble work on the Canadian side, having a descent of 334 feet effected by means of 37 locks, and passable from lake to lake by vessels of 134 feet over all, 26 feet beam, and 9 feet draught, stowing 3,000 barrels under deck.

By means of this fine improvement, it has free egress to Lake Ontario, and thence to the St. Lawrence; and by the various improvements of that river, and communications from Ontario and Champlain, to many points, as heretofore enumerated, on the Atlantic seaboard.

The artificial outlets of this lake are very numerous, and no less important; many of them already of considerable age, and reflecting much credit on the early energy and enterprise of the State of New York, by which they were principally constructed, in order to secure a precedence in the trade of the great West.

These are, the Welland canal, as described; the Erie canal, connecting the waters of Lake Erie with the Hudson river, and thus by direct navigation with the Atlantic; the Erie and Beaver canal, from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Beaver, on the Ohio, affording access to Pittsburg and Cincinnati; the Ohio canal, connecting it with the Ohio river at Portsmouth, one hundred miles above Cincinnati, and again (by a branch to Beaver) with the same river about forty miles below Pittsburg; the Erie and Miami canal, from Toledo to Cincinnati; and the Wabash canal, connecting the Miami and Erie with the Ohio at Evans