Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/29

Rh divided from those of the Patowmac by the Alleghaney Mountain. From the falls, where it intersects the Laurel Mountain, to Fort Cumberland, the head of the navigation on the Patowmac, is 40 miles of very mountainous road. Wills's Creek, at the mouth of which was Fort Cumberland, is 30 or 40 yards wide, but affords no navigation as yet. Cheat River, another considerable branch of the Monongahela, is 200 yards wide at its mouth, and 100 yards at the Dunkard's settlement, 50 miles higher. It is navigable for boats, except in dry seasons. The boundary between Virginia and Pennsylvania crosses it about 3 or 4 miles above its mouth.

The Alleghaney River, with a slight swell, affords navigation for light batteaux to Venango, at the mouth of French Creek, where it is 200 yards wide; and it is practised even to Le Bœuf, from whence there is a portage of 15 miles to Presque Isle, on Lake Erie.

The country watered by the Missisipi and its Eastern branches, constitutes five-eighths of the United States, two of which five-eighths are occupied by the Ohio and its waters; the residuary streams which run into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, and the St. Laurence, water the remaining three-eighths.

Before we quit the subject of the Western waters, we will take a view of their principal connections with the Atlantic. These are three; the Hudson's river, the Patowmac, and the Missisipi itself. Down the last will pass all heavy commodities. But the navigation through the Gulf of Mexico is so dangerous, and that up the Missisipi so difficult and tedious, that it is thought probable that European merchandise will not return through that channel. It is most likely that flour, timber, and other heavy articles will be floated on rafts, which will themselves be an article for sale as well as their loading, the navigators returning by land or in light batteaux. There will therefore be a competition between the Hudson and Patowmac rivers for the residue of the commerce of all the country westward of Lake Erie, on the waters of the lakes, of the Ohio, and upper parts of the Missisipi. To go to New York, that part of the trade which comes from the lakes or their