Editorial note — Chapter V · ACROSS THE WATERS[48]

Engineers disagree as to the possibility of making a ship-canal of the great highway of the Mississippi; but engineers have always disagreed about the doing of great things, and then have always done them. It is likely that the dream of that shrewd merchant-explorer, Louis Joliet, will eventually be realized, and the Chicago drainage-canal will in that case attain a great importance.

Indeed, inland-water transportation may be upon the eve of a great development. Thus, in December, 1900, there was organized a canal company for the purpose of navigating the Red River of the North, of improving the channel by dredging, putting in locks and reservoirs, to regulate that historic stream into conditions virtually those of a canal. Another curious proposition to reach Congress in the same year was a bill for the purpose of building a ship-canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, an enterprise which would have great significance in the coal and iron trade. This canal would follow the course of La Salle on his first journey from the Great Lakes—the old south-bound war-trail of the Six Nations. Geography, of all things, seems to repeat itself. No one may tell what new importance this canal proposition may attain, though it may be dormant for a time.

Early in the year 1901 the leading journals of Germany were discussing the prospects of a canal from Chicago to the Atlantic Ocean, and held the enterprise practicable.

As showing the extent of water-transportation on our Great Lakes, it may be stated that more tonnage passes Sault Ste. Marie in seven months of each year than goes through the Suez Canal in three years. The city of Duluth alone, at the head of the water-trail, has a tonnage each year of more than 11,500,000 tons.