Upon examining the coast of the United States from Boston to Florida,
it will be seen that there is almost a continuous line of inland
navigation, extending from northeast to southwest in a direction
parallel to that of the coast, formed, in the north by a series of bays
and rivers, and in the south, by a number of long sounds, or by the
narrow passes between the mainland and the chain of low islands that
lie in front of the former. The necks of land that separate these bays,
rivers, and lagoons, are all flat and of inconsiderable breadth. From
Providence (42 miles south of Boston) to New York are Narragansett Bay
and Long Island Sound, together 180 miles in length. Thence to reach
to the Delaware you go to New Brunswick at the head of the Raritan Bay,
where you encounter the New Jersey isthmus, a level tract, not more
than 40 feet above the level of the sea, or than 35 to 40 miles in
width. This neck is now cut across by the Raritan and Delaware Canal,
a fine work, navigable by the small coasting craft, and 43 miles in
length, exclusive of a navigable feeder 24 miles, all lately executed
by a company, in less than three years, at a cost of about 2,500,000
dollars.[CB]
This canal terminates at Bordentown, on the Delaware. Hence the
navigation is continued to Delaware City, 70 miles below Bordentown,
and 40 below Philadelphia. There, the isthmus which divides the
Delaware from the Chesapeake, is cut through by a canal, of which the
summit level is only 12 feet above the surface of the sea; this is the
Chesapeake and Delaware canal, like the last mentioned of dimensions
suited to coasting vessels. The cost was very great, about 2,600,000
dollars; length 13 1-2 miles. Having entered the Chesapeake, the
voyage may be continued to Norfolk about 200 miles. Thence, to the
series of sounds and inland channels on the coast of North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia, extends the Dismal Swamp Canal, whose
length is 20 miles, and whose summit level is only 10 feet above the
level of the sea; this is also adapted for coasting vessels. The works
intended to continue the navigation beyond the sounds connected with
the Dismal Swamp canal, have not been completed, and to the south of
the Chesapeake the line is, therefore, imperfect; but steamboats run
from Charleston to Savannah, by the channels and lagoons between the
mainland and the low islands which yield the famous long-staple cotton.
SECOND LINE. COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE NORTH AND SOUTH BY THE MARITIME
CAPITALS.
Parallel to the preceding line which is designed for the transportation
of bulky articles, is another further inland for the use of travellers,
and the lighter and more valuable merchandise, on which steam is
becoming the only motive power, both by land and by water; by land on
railways, and by water in steamboats. You go from Boston to Providence
by a railroad, 42 miles in length, which cost 1,500,000 dollars, or
33,000 dollars a mile. From Providence to New York, passengers are
carried by the steamboats in from 14 to 18 hours; some boats have made
the passage in 12 hours. In passing from Narragansett Bay to the Sound,
it is necessary to double Point Judith, where there is commonly a rough
sea, to avoid which a railway is now in progress from Providence to
Stonington, a distance of 47 miles. A third railroad, of which the
utility seems questionable (since the boats in the Sound move at the
rate of 15 miles an hour), is projected from a point on Long Island
opposite Stonington to Brooklyn, a distance of 88 miles.
Between New York and Philadelphia, you go by steamboat to South
Amboy on Raritan Bay, 28 miles, whence a railroad extends across
the peninsula to Bordentown, and down along the Delaware to Camden,
opposite Philadelphia. In summer a steamboat is taken at Bordentown,
but in winter the Delaware is frozen over, and the railway is then
used through the whole distance to transport the crowd that is always
going and coming between the commercial and financial capitals of the
United States, between the great mart and the exchange of the Union,
between the North and the South. An ice-boat lands the traveller in
Philadelphia, a few minutes after he has left the cars at Camden. This
railroad is 61 miles in length, and cost 2,300,000 dollars, or 38,000
dollars a mile. It has but one track most of the way. I met many
persons at Philadelphia, who remembered having been two, and sometimes
three long days on the road to New York; it is now an affair of seven
hours, which will soon be reduced to six. Two railroads belonging to a
different group, of which one is completed, and the other nearly so,
will form, with the exception of an interval of several miles, a second
line across the peninsula, from New York to Philadelphia. The one
extends from Philadelphia to Trenton, 26 miles; the other from Jersey
City, opposite New York to New Brunswick, 30 miles; if, therefore,
rails were laid between New Brunswick and Trenton, a distance of 28
miles, over a perfectly level plain, the land communication between New
York and Philadelphia would be complete; but the State of New Jersey
has hitherto refused to authorise this connection, because it received
a considerable sum from the Camden and Amboy company for the monopoly
of the travel.[CC]
From Philadelphia to Baltimore, the route is continued by a steamboat
to Newcastle, and a railroad from thence to Frenchtown, across
the peninsula, 16 1-4 miles long, whence another steamboat takes
the traveller to Baltimore, in 8 or 9 hours after starting from
Philadelphia. The Newcastle and Frenchtown railroad cost 400,000
dollars, or 24,500 dollars a mile. The navigation of the Chesapeake
and Delaware is sometimes interrupted by ice, and it has, therefore,
been thought that it would be useful to have a continuous railroad from
Philadelphia; there would also be a saving of time, for the present
route is somewhat circuitous. Different companies have undertaken
different portions of this work, which will pass by Wilmington and
Havre de Grace, at the mouth of the Susquehanna.
The whole distance by this route is only 93 miles, instead of 118, the
distance by the present line, and the passage will occupy five or six
hours, instead of eight or nine. From Baltimore southwardly two routes
offer themselves; you may take the steamboat to Norfolk, a distance of
200 miles, which is accomplished in 18 or 20 hours, whence another boat
ascends the James River to Richmond still more rapidly, the distance
of about 135 miles being passed over in 10 hours; or you may go from
Norfolk to Weldon on the Roanoke by a railroad 77 miles in length, of
which two thirds are completed.[CD]
From Baltimore you may also go to Washington, by a branch of the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and thence by steamboat down the Potomac
to a little village, 15 miles from Fredericksburg, from which a
railroad is now in progress to Richmond. It will be 58 miles in length,
and will cost but 12,000 dollars a mile, including the engines, cars,
and depots. From Petersburg, 20 miles from Richmond, a railroad
extends to Blakely on the Roanoke, 60 miles, and the interval between
Petersburg and Richmond will soon be filled up. The Petersburg and
Roanoke railroad, which is shorter than the post-road, follows with
very little deviation an old Indian trail, a remarkable fact, which was
told me by the able engineer Mr Moncure Robinson. It extends, almost
entirely on the surface of the ground and without embankments, through
the sandy, uncultivated plains, intersected by pools of stagnant water,
which uniformly border the sea from the Chesapeake to Cape Florida, and
are annually infested by the fever of the country. The whole region
is most admirably adapted for railroads, which are constructed almost
wholly of wood. The surface is graded by nature, and the sandy soil
offers an excellent foundation for the wooden frame on which the rails
are placed. The still virgin forests, consisting of pine and oak,
afford an inexhaustible supply of timber for the construction of the
railways, free to whoever wishes to use it. But if the nature of the
country is well suited to this object, the condition of the population
is far from being so. In this sterile tract, the inhabitants are thinly
scattered over the surface, and there are only a few villages here and
there on the rivers. Large towns, in which alone the necessary capital
would be found, do not exist, and the aid of Northern capitalists has
been necessarily resorted to. Philadelphia capital has been largely
employed in the construction of the Petersburg and Richmond railroads,
and without it, the great line between the South and the North, will
not be continued across North Carolina, one of the poorest States in
the confederacy, and connected with the works completed or in progress
in Georgia and South Carolina.
There is, therefore, a great void of 325 miles, between the Roanoke
and Charleston, the chief city of South Carolina, or rather of 275
miles between the Roanoke and Columbia, the capital of that State.[CE]
From Charleston, a railroad 136 miles in length, extends through
the uncultivated and feverish zone of sand and pine-barrens to the
cotton-region; it terminates at Hamburg, on the River Savannah,
opposite Augusta, which is the principal interior cotton-market; the
cost of this work was only about 9,500 dollars a mile including some
cars, &c. Its construction is peculiar in this respect, that where its
level is above that of the surface, recourse has been had to piles
instead of embankments; the railway, thus perched upon stilts from 15
to 25 feet high, certainly leaves something to be desired in regard
to the safety of travellers, but it was necessary to construct it,
and to do so with a very small capital, and in this respect it has
been successful. The receipts have already been sufficiently large to
permit the company gradually to substitute embankments of earth for the
frail props on which it formerly rested. Another singular circumstance
about it is, that it was constructed almost entirely by slaves. This
road was undertaken with the purpose of diverting the cotton, which
descended the river Savannah to the town of the same name, from that
place to Charleston, and it has fully answered the expectations of its
projectors.
From Augusta, the Georgia railroad has lately been begun, and will
traverse some of the most fertile cotton districts in the State;
it will extend to Athens, a distance of 115 miles. To continue the
line from North to South, or from Boston to New Orleans, it would be
necessary that this railroad should be prolonged in the direction of
Montgomery, Alabama, whence a steamer takes the traveller to Mobile,
on the River Alabama.[CF] Between Mobile and New Orleans, there are
regular lines of steamboats running through Mobile Bay, Pascagoula
Sound, and Lakes Borgne and Pontchartain. The four last miles, between
the latter lake and New Orleans, are passed over in a quarter of an
hour on a railroad, which the Louisiana legislature calls in its bad
French _chemin à coulisses_. Such is the line between the North and
South, of which the execution is the most advanced; it will not be
the only one, but as civilisation establishes itself further west and
capital multiplies, several new routes will be formed, receding more
and more from the coast.
The Baltimore and Ohio railroad is connected at Harper's Ferry with
the Winchester railroad, 30 miles in length, which runs up the bed of
one of those long valleys that separate the successive ridges of the
Alleghany Mountains from each other. That in which Winchester stands,
is one of the most regular and fertile of these great basins, and is
celebrated under the name of the Virginia Valley. Although, therefore,
the Winchester railroad was constructed only for the purpose of giving
the produce of Winchester and its vicinity an easy access to the market
of Baltimore, yet it may one day become a link in the great chain of
communication extending through the Valley from north to south. A
company has already been chartered for continuing the work to Staunton,
a distance of 96 miles. Another line from the South to the North,
which will, perhaps, be connected with that of the great Valley, has
been projected at New Orleans, and authorised by the legislatures of
Louisiana and the other States through which it will pass; it is a
railroad from New Orleans to Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, and
I am assured that the work will soon be commenced. This line aspires
to nothing less than a competition with the magnificent river lines of
the Ohio and the Mississippi, in the transportation of passengers and
cotton.