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 392 the two latter through the lakes, the former the best and shortest. As there also is good navigation, not only for canoes and batteaux, but for large flats, schooners and sloops down the Ohio into the Mississippi, should Cox's account be true of the communication of this last river with the South Sea, with only one portage, I leave you to judge of what vast importance such a discovery would be to Great Britain, as well as to her Plantations, which, in that case, as I observed above, must become the general mart of the European World, at least for the rich and costly products of the East, and a mart at which chapmen might be furnished with all those commodities on much easier terms than the tedious and hazardous, and expensive navigation to those countries can at present afford. This would supersede the necessity of going any more in quest of the North East passage, which, probably, if ever discovered, will also be productive of another discovery, that it lies in too inclement a latitude ever to be useful.

The discovery of a communication through this part of the continent with the South Sea, would not only be a nursery for our seamen, but would be instrumental in saving the lives of great numbers of them, under Heaven, the protectors of you and of us; who, poor fellows, drop off like rotten sheep by scorbutic disorders consequent upon such long voyages as that to the East Indies. What an exhaustless fund of wealth would here be opened, superior to Potosi and all the other South American mines? What an extent of region I What a{{bar}! But no more. These are visionary excursions into futurity, with which I sometimes used to feast my imagination, ever dwelling with pleasure on the consideration of whatever bids fair for