while describing in the most animated and glowing terms the rapid march of the useful arts through our country, when once freed from a foreign yoke; the spirit with which agriculture and commerce both external and internal would advance; the facilities which would be afforded them by the numerous water courses, intersecting the country, and the ease by which they might be made to communicate; he announced, in language highly poetic, and to which I cannot do justice, that at no very distant day the waters of the great western inland seas would, by the aid of man, break through their barriers and mingle with those of the Hudson. I recollect asking him how they were to break through these barriers. To which he replied, that numerous streams passed them through natural channels, and that artificial ones might be conducted by the same routes."[1]
In his diary for October, 1795, Morris describes his feeling on viewing the Caledonian Canal in Scotland; "when I see this," he writes, "my mind opens to a view
- ↑ Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris (Boston, 1832), vol. i, pp. 497–498.
