Bureau County, Illinois - Chapter 17: Tbe Illinois and Michigan Canal - Bistort or the Project or Extending to the Mississippi Bivkr - Jacob Qaler, Thb, 1885

Chapter 17: Tbe Illinois and Michigan Canal - Bistort or the Project or Extending to the Mississippi Bivkr - Jacob Qaler, Thb

TBE ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL - BISTORT or THE PROJECT or EXTENDING TO THE MISSISSIPPI BIVKR - JACOB QALER, THB FATHER or THE SCHEME - SOME CURIOUS LEGISLATION - INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS - SOME STATUTORY PTEOTECNIOS, ETC., ITC.

AS early as 1821 the Legislature appropriated $10,000 for a survey of the route of this canal. Judge Smith and others were appointed Commissioners, and they appointed Rene' Paul, of St. Louis, and Justin Post, of Cairo, as engineers. They surveyed the route, reported the work easily practicable, and estimated it would cost $600,000 or $700,000. In 1826 Congress donated to the State about 300,000 acres of land on the route of the canal. The stock was never subscribed. In 1828 another law was passed, providing for the sale of lots and land, for the appointment of a Board of Commissioners, and for the commencement of the work. Nothing was done under the law, except the sale of some of the lands, and a new survey of the line and a new estimate, by the new engineer, Mr. Bucklin. He ran the estimate up into millions, instead of thousands, but still too low, as experience finally demonstrated. After this second failure there were various projects of giving the work to a company, or of making a railroad over the contemplated route. But nothing effectual was proposed to be done until in the Legislature of 1834-35.

George Farquer, of Sangamon County, was Chairman of the Senate Committee of Internal Improvements, and he made a masterly State paper in a report on the canal project, and recommended the authorization of a loan of the State credit, which passed the Senate, but failed in the House. Its failure in the House was principally due to the fact that the Governor, in his message, Lad asserted with great confidence that the money for the work could be obtained upon a pledge of the lauds alone. And Farquer's bill, thus amended, became a law. This was the firet efficient movement toward the construction of the canal. The loan failed, but at a special session of 1835 a law was introduced by James M. Strode, of Peoria, authorizing a loan of $500,000 on the credit of the State. This loan was negotiated by Gov. Duncan in 1 836, and with this money the work was commenced in the month of June of that year. William F. Thornton, of Shelby County, Gurdon S. Hubbard, of Chicago, and William B. Archer, of Clark County, were the first Canal Commissioners.

In the spring of 1836 the great land and town lot speculation of those times had fairly set in and was affecting the whole country, and Illinois was a favorite field for the wild craze that took possession of the people. It seemed to commence in this State first in Chicago, and was the means of starting up that place and at once transforming it from a mere trading-post to a struggling, bustling town of several thousand inhabitants - looking something like a flock of new barns had alighted among boggs and mud puddles and had most of them brought their stilts along to alight upon. The stories of the sudden fortunes made there traveled over the civilized world, exciting the amazement and wonder of men, and the pell-mell rush commenced. A spirit of gambling was started there and speculators and adventurers and all were wild with a desire for sudden and splendid wealth. Chicago had for a few years been only a great town market. It now became an immense

"Board of Trade. " For hundreds of miles around the plats of towns were carried there to be disposed of at auction. From one end of the State to the other, indeed, into other States, the infection spread, and at Cairo the absolute furor was worse even than in Chicago, and there was D. B. Holbrook and his great " South Sea Bubble," backed not only by every politician and statesman in southern Illinois, but by the State Legislature itself. And upon the State statute books of that day are solemn acts of the Legislature enacting " by the authority of the people of the State of Illinois," that Cairo was high and dry above high water mark - that it was the natural point for the great city of the New World. Solemnly these men enacted the most absurd spread-eagle auctioneer stump speeches and were ready to vote the State's credit - fortunately there was no money in the treasury - to these mad-cap schemes where they had purchased or been given lots. The East caught the infection, and every vessel coming West was loaded with people, bound for these fairy cities of the West. But as it was impossible for the people of the old States to get here fast enough for the desires of the Western speculators, they freighted the returning vessels with town lots, cities, par fountains, colleges (good places for them), canals, railroads, etc. Lands and town lots were the only exports of the country, pretty much the sum total of the productions, and the decorative arts were taxed in producing those highly colored lithographs of cities (that were to be) with their six and eightstory blocks and squares, their magnificent public buildings, schoolhouses, churches, fountains, parks and lawns; elegant carriages and equipages, the smoking chimney stacks of factories, glittering spires and minarets filled the distant prospective of the alluring pictures. And upon great auction days in these leading embryo cities would gather the people by thousands - statesmen, poets, editors, literary men and great orators - and with bands of music the momentous event would be inaugurated by the people assembling about the platforms erected for the auctioneers and commence exercises, dedicate them, as it were, by a poem, perhaps by George D. Prentice, and speeches from some of the most celebrated orators from Kentucky or Ohio, and then the auctioneer would commence and at fabulous prices lots out two or three miles in the swamps and jungles would be scrambled for.

Across in Missouri one of these towns, called Marion City, was laid off on the banks of the river, a bottom prairie, surrounded by swamps. The founder of this city had discovered the spot in the dry season of the year and he at once commenced extended operations. He borrowed money and commenced building warehouses, mills and factories, and here came the people, and temporary tents, brush huts and cabins were put up. So immense was this promised city that fifteen miles back on an elevation was laid off grounds for a college, and a railroad was to be built from the city to the institution. The first little rise that came in the river flooded the place, and then money was borrowed and levees were built. This gave work to thousands of men, as they were seven or eight miles long and averaged over seven feet high. And then people would come and every steamboat was laden with fresh immigrants, the most of whom had had their houses all framed and made ready to put up on their arrival. The spring freshete came and the city and levees and all were soon lost from view beneath the eddying waters.

State would be just towns with not enough room left for a single farm. After Marion City had been literally swept from the face of the earth by the waters, a cartoon appeared in an Eastern paper, which represented parties in a flat-boat with long poles hunting for their houses. One man had run down his pole a great length and exclaimed: "I think I felt the top of my chimney."

When the present generation reads the story of the internal improvement craze that seized upon the State about this time through the Legislature, and which resulted in State bankruptcy, they are apt to wonder how so many fools in finance and business could have been gathered together at the Capital. But the facts we have given above explain the action of the State, and is only another proof that in a representative government the condition of the public mind is generally truly reflected in the law makers. Or, in other words, the best of legislative bodies are no more to be implicitly trusted for wisdom than are their constituents, and may furnish the student of history a hint that the demagogue's often repeated assertion that vox populi, vox Dei, is to be received cum grano sails.

It was this widespread craze that unsettled the judgments of business men, and the evidence of honest sincerity of the proprietors of these paper towns, especially along the rivers, is given by the fact that while they borrowed immense sums of money in the East and in Europe, they expended it in levees that were washed away, and in houses and foundations for great public buildings that were flooded before they were built, and the bubble would burst and wreck proprietor and purchasers in one common ruin.

Hence, as already intimated, in the fall of 1836 began the agitation of the system of internal improvements. It was argued that Illinois had all the advantages to become a great State; that her soil, climate and vast territory were such as to invite people here and make all who would come rich. All it needed was inhabitants and enterprise, and these would be invited by a liberal system of State improvements. Public meetings were called and resolutions passed and this new craze spread over the State so rapidly that before the Legislature of that winter assembled, delegates were appointed by the people's meetings and they were to meet in a great Convention at the Capital simultaneously with the Legislature. This Convention had much greater men in it than did the legislative body. It formed a plan and pointed out ways for the vast improvements by the State, and in its communication to the Legislature it concluded with this significant phrase: "that it should be commensurate with the wants of the people." This was the culmination of the new frenzy, and wild speculation once more became the order of the day, and every means was adopted to hastily give an artificial value to property. People surrendered their judgments to the dictates of the wildest imaginations. No scheme was so extravagant as not to appear plausible to some. Experience had taught them that their own pockets were not inexhaustible, but now the State had stepped in they never dreamed that there could come an end to the golden stream from this fountain. Possibilities were argued into probabilities and the latter into infallibilities.

The people were deeply moved and their actions influenced the legislators, and in the memorable session of that body of 1837 it passed an act providing for a canal from Pern to Chicago, for making the Kaskaskia River and the Little Wabash and Bock Rivers navigable, and for railroads from Galena to Cairo; from. Alton to Mt. Carmel; from Alton to the east boundary of the State in the direction of Terre Haute; from Quincy via Springfield to the Wabash River; from Bloomington to Pekin; and from Peoria to Warsaw. In addition to the canal and rivers there were 1,300 miles of railroad provided for. A separate loan of $4,000,000 was for the Peru & Chicago Canal. The Legislature had already provided for Canal Commissioners and now a Board of Fund Commissioners was created, which was to negotiate the loan for the whole of the contemplated improvements, as well as a Board of Public Works, one for each of the seven judicial circuits of the State. This Board was to superintend the works, and the crowning folly of the act was a provision that the works should all commence at the same time, at each end of the roads, and at the river crossings. Thus was a swarm of officials provided for, and their control and appointment became one general political intrigue. The Legislature was to elect these multitudes of men to expend the people's millions, and that honorable body came very near making corrupt combinations to elect and appoint each other to all the best places, although the Constitution made them ineligible, by providing that no member should be appointed to an office created during the term for which he had been elected. Gov. Duncan had to dec tare he would not commission members, if elected, to these offices. And the Legislature attempted to pass a law to nullify the Constitution by dispensing with a commission from the Gov- ; ernor, in the face of the provision of the fundamental law that "all civil officers should be commissioned" by him. The Legislature made a vigorous fight against the Governor and the Constitution and adjourned from day < to day. And the people were not shocked by these flagrant acts of their representatives.

the immortal Long Nine, two Senators and seven Representatives, as follows: Abraham Lincoln, E. D. Baker, John Dawson, Ninian W. Edwards, W. F. Elkin, A. McCormick, Daniel Stone and Robert L. Wilson were the Representatives, and Archer G. Herndon and Job Fletcher in the Senate. Sangamon County wanted the State Capital from Fayette County, and the "Long Nine " were a conspicuous power in that session of the Legislature. Of the means used in the Legislature, Gov. Ford says: " The canal was threatened if other sections of the State were denied the improvements demanded by them; and thus the friends of the canal were forced to log-roll for that work by supporting others which were to be ruinous to the country. Roads and improvements were proposed everywhere, to enlist every section of the State. Three or four efforts were made to pass a smaller system, and when defeated, the bill would be amended by the addition of other roads, until a majority was obtained for it. Those counties which could not obtain a road were to receive their portion of the $200,000 set apart for them. Three roads had to bo made to terminate at Alton, before the Alton interest would agree to the system. The seat of government was to be removed to Springfield. Sangamon County was represented by the ' Long Nines,' the seven Whigs (only one of the ten being a Democrat) in the house, and two Whig Senators. Amongst them were some dextrous jugglers and managers in politics, whose whole object was to obtain the seat of government for Springfield. The ' Long Nine ' threw themselves as a unit in support of, or opposition to, every local measure of interest, but never without a bargain for votes in return on the seat of government question. Most of the counties were small, having but one Representative, and many of them with but one for a whole district, and this gave Sangamon County a decided preponderance in the log-rolling system of those days. * * * By such means the ' Long Nine ' rolled along like a snow-ball gathering accessions of strength at every turn, until they swelled up a considerable party for Springfield to be the seat of government. Thus it was made to cost the State about $6,000,000 to remove the seat of government from Vandalia to Springfield." This Legislature will forever possess a historical interest far beyond that of any other legislative body in the history of the State. A list of some of the men who were in the Legislature and who voted for the internal improvement system is enough to immortalize it as a law-making body. Among others were Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Ninian W. Edwards, Gov. A. C. French, John Hogan, U. F. Linder, John A. McClernand, Lieut. -Gov. Moore, Gen. James Shields, (afterward Senator from three States), Robert Smith, (Congressman), Judge Dan Stone, James Semple, the Speaker, and afterward United States Senator. All these voted in the affirmative. Of those who voted in the negative, the only ones who attained any eminence were William A. Richardson (short term in the United States Senate), Col. John J. Hardin and John Dement.

The internal improvement laws and those other equally bad laws of the State banks ran their career in about three years; and in 1840, after they were exhausted for evil, the Legislature commenced repealing the acts. The Presidential election coming on that year, the people of Illinois forgot their own sad financial condition in the din and general hurrah over the "coon-skin and hard-cider " campaign. No politician was ever called to account for the grievous mistake of voting for the bad laws. They had not been party measures, and all prominent politicians were equally guilty with the people, and in fact the people rather seemed to sympathize with these erring brothers, and the list of those who voted for the measures, and they were advanced in life much above those level-headed and certainly honest members of the Legislature who faced the public storm and voted " No."

But to go back a little. The work upon these improvements was commenced upon all the railroads and upon the canal. The Board of Canal Commissioners, in pursuance of law, projected a magnificent work, and even completed small portions of it, in a manner creditable to the engineers and contractors. But here again was the spirit of over-calculation working its cruel mischiefs. The United States, in 1826, had donated 300,000 acres of land to this work. And now, in the frenzy of the hour, these lands were estimated at a fabulous value, and hence the Commissioners supposed their funds were inexhaustible for carrying on the work, and they projected a large and deep canal, to be fed by the waters of Lake Michigan. To complete their vast plans and make a steamboat canal, would cost about $9,000,000, but this was nothing in the estimation of the Commissioners.*

" On the 4th of July, 1836, every man, woman and child in the city iChicago), whose health would permit, went down to where the canal was to be commenced, then called Canalport, and celebrated the removal of the first shovelful of dirt by the Canal Commissioner. Near the place was a living spring of water. The men chopped up the lemons of several full boxes and threw them into the spring, to make lemonade for the temperance people. Then they spoiled the lemonade by emptying into it a whole barrel of whisky, which so penetrated the fountain-head of the spring, that Bridgeport people feel the effects of it to this day. All of you who have ever heard the late Dr. William B. Egan. the most eloquent of the many eloquent Irish orators Chicago has ever had, will remember how fond he was of quoting Pope's poetry. Some of his audience had quietly stolen away, and as they had supposed) unobserved by him, to slake their thirst at the spring, when he brought down the crowd by pointing his finger at them and exclaiming:

State was plunged over $14,000,000 in debt, and out of it all the State afterward went on and finished about forty miles of railroad, and did eventually complete the Peru & Michigan Canal, at a cost of over $6, 000,000. The forty miles of railroad cost the State over a $1,000,000, and the State eventually sold this and took its pay in evidences of State indebtedness for $100,000. But on the canal investments it seems the State was never so greatly wronged. The canal lauds brought the State over $5,000,000, and its earnings over expenses of operating have been over $2,000,000. The termini of the canal are Chicago and Hennepin, and for many years the States of Illinois and Iowa have been deeply concerned in extending this great work from Hennepin to the Mississippi River. It is now believed that it is only a question of time when the General Government will take the present canal (which is offered as a free gift, if completed to the Mississippi River) and make it a great artery of cheap transportation from the Mississippi to the sea shore. This is a matter of vast interest to Bureau County - the leading county of its size in the United States in its area of corn grown. Every ten years the county will produce an average of over 100,000,000 bushels of corn. On this one article of corn alone then a canal would be worth over $5,000,000 to the county every ten years, or $500,000 yearly. Every cent transportation is cheapened to the sea shore adds that much to the value of the crops, and hence it proportionally increases the value of the land.

The great problem of this age, especially to the people of the Upper Mississippi Val- ! ley, is cheap transportation, and every day it is more and more pressing for a solution. The interest in this subject in the six States of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin may be partially under- stood when we reflect that these States annually produce of wheat, corn and oats 1,047,- 536,850 bushels. And to show how rapidly, too, the increase of production is going on, we may cite one of many that we might give as instances. In Iowa the wheat from 1849 to 1860 aggregated 50,000,000 bushels; from 1860 to 1870, 195,000,000; from 1870 to 1881 it was 375, 000,000 bushels. The total wheat crop of the United States in 1867 was 181,- 199,000 bushels, and in 1881 it was 498,- 549,000 bushels, and the larger portion of this increase was in the Upper Mississippi Valley, the locality deeply interested in the extension of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. This is the locality that is destined, is already, the chief producer of American exports. Those European markets are no longer left to the supply by American producers. These are invited, but only in competition with those of other countries. The freight rates to be paid in transporting products from the Upper Mississippi to Liverpool often alone determine the possibility or impossibility of profitable exportation. On this point we are furnished the most conclusive evidence. A committee which had its sessions in New York in September, 1881, recorded the testimony of members of the New York Produce Exchange, which asserted that it frequently happened that the difference of one cent per bushel in the price of wheat in New York City determined the ability or inability of the commission men and dealers to make shipments to European markets. One shipper placed that controlling difference as low as one- fourth of a cent per bushel. It was also the concurrent statement of several of the gentlemen testifying that advance in freight rates frequently estopped grain exportations, while freight reductions stimulated such movements of cereals, and gave legitimate impetus to the grain markets of the entire country.

So manifestly correct are these several testimonies, that they were even anticipated by Mr. Joseph Nimmo, Jr., of the Bureau of Statistics, when he said, in his report on the commerce of the United States for 1880 (page 154):

" Especially is this the case in regard to the surplus agricultural products of the Western and Northwestern States. The low rates which prevail for transportation upon the Northern water lines, therefore, exercises an important regulating influence over the price of all the products of the West, not only in the markets of the Atlantic seaboard States, but also in foreign countries. It is due chiefly to this fact, during the last ten years, that the value of domestic exports from the United States has greatly increased, and that since the year ended June 30, 1875, the value of exports from the United States has largely exceeded the value of imports to the United States."

Scarcely less important to the Upper Mississippi Valley region than the export of its products, rendered possible and profitable only when cheap transportation is secured, is the ready and inexpensive delivery of its imports. The aggregate of these increases year by year, while it has already reached proportion and value which are literally immense. Thus, not only are vast totals of anthracite coal and crude and manufactured iron from Pennsylvania, pottery from New Jersey and Ohio, hard woods from Indiana, and stone and bituminous coal from eastern Illinois, shipped in large quantities to the Upper Mississippi Valley States, but the cotton goods of Massachusetts, the woolens of Rhode Island, the machinery _of Connecticut, the agricultural implements of New York, all constituting heavy bulk freights, are constantly adding to the number of their consumers in the wide area of territory to be more immediately benefited bj the construction of the Hennepin Canal.

A single locality may be specifically mentioned as furnishing significant illustration of the general fact thus urged to attention. The tri-cities of Moline, Davenport and Rock Island (to name each in the order of its manufacturing importance) have had their respective business interests carefully revised in statistical form, at the close of each year for the columns of the Davenport Gazette. The last of these reports - that of January 1, 1883, for the year 1882 - presents some noteworthy figures. A single plow manufactory establishment at Moline (Deere & Co.) consumed in 1882 1,110 tons of steel, 3,000 tons of wrought iron, 900 tons of pig iron, 300 tons of malleable iron, 2,000,000 feet of oak and ash lumber, 400 tons of grindstones, 30 tons of emery, and 250 barrels of oil and varnish, employing weekly 700 men. Another establishment (the Moline Plow Company's Works) used only a less aggregate of similar material, the value of the products of these two establishments footing up to $2,500,000 for the year. The Moline Wagon Company manufactured goods to the value of $625, - 000; the Deere & Mansur Planter Company, to the value of $600,000; the two malleable iron companies, to the value of $280,000; the machine, engine and boiler shops, to the value of $480,000; the paper mills, to the value of $150,000, the pump factory, to the value of $125,000; while the saw-mills and other establishments aggregated a yield of products exceeding in value $1,000, 000 more. In Davenport the enumerated manufactures for the year - agricultural implements, lumber, flour, oatmeal, glucose, carriages, woolen goods, cigars, clothing, etc. - aggregated a value of $5,864,876; and the value by jobbing houses, the sum of $8,046,730; the shipments of local freights by three railroads, 17,536 car-loads, and the receipts, 16,653 car-loads. In Rock Island the plow works manufactured goods in excess of 1,000, 000 in value; the glass works to the value of $200,000 ; stove works, to the value of $1,000,000; the saw-mills, 80,- , 031,866 feet of lumber only, 18,328,750 shingles, 16,653,000 lath, and 198,650 pickets. If to this partial exhibit of the manufacturing interest of Rock Island City were added those of the United States Arsenal, on Rock Island, the aggregate of railroad shipments would be 17,982 car-loads shipped and 18,258 forwarded by four roads, including ' the receipts and exports of coal, largely , mined from the extensive coal-fields lying within an area of fifteen miles east and southeast of Rock Island.

The construction of a canal to connect the waters of the Upper Mississippi with those of the lakes, by way of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, has long been earnestly desired by the people occupying the vast area lying west of Chicago and seeking improved channels of communication with that city and the East. Four times - in 1864, 1870, 1874 and 1882, respectively - has the General Assembly of Iowa, by concurrent action on the part of each of its branches, specifically memorialized Congress for the opening of such a canal by the General Government. The Legislature of Illinois haw also similarly addressed its appeal to Congress repeatedly, the last occasion being that of the special session of that body last year. These two States, thus speaking through their representatives, embrace more than 5,000,000 of people. Their expression of opinion and desire have been earnestly supported, too, by resolutions adopted by such Boards of Trade as those of St. Paul, La Crosse, Duluth,

Davenport, Bock Island and Chicago in the Northwest, and those of Buffalo, Syracuse and New York in the East, and by the resolutions of the Senate branch of the New York Assembly last May, which would have been concurred in by the House had the session had two days longer continuance. In the city of New York, particularly, not only on the Board of Trade and Transportation, but the "Produce Exchange," a body numbering in its membership nearly 3,000 of the produce commission and other business men of that city, have addressed Congress in urgent appeals in behalf of the canal in question, usually denominated the " Hennepin Canal." In May, 1881, there assembled in Davenport, Iowa, a delegate body of about four hundred members, representing commercial bodies, municipal corporations, and farmers' associations, of seven different States, expressly to urge upon the attention of the country the desirability of and the necessity for the construction of the said canal by the General Government. That Convention, attended and addressed by Governors of States, members of Congress and prominent business men, emphatically urged upon Congress the great importance of the proposed canal as a means to secure to the people a greatly needed improvement of facilities for the transportation of their products and commodities.

Exactly what a boon the extension of this canal will become to all the country west and northwest of Chicago, will be plainly seen by the following table of railroad charges for 1880:

Competition

When the great work is completed to the Mississippi River, - perhaps eventually extended to all the great granaries of the Northwest beyond the Mississippi - the first point of historical interest to posterity will be, who was the originator of the idea; whose brain conceived it, and who is entitled to the imperishable honor of being its sponsor? In this light the following letter will be read with great interest by not only the people of Bureau County, but all who are interested in the Hennepin Canal, or the story of some of the remarkable men, who like the writer of this letter, have pioneered civilization literally across the continent. When the great national canal, as it will be some day, is completed to the Mississippi River, it should be made the eternal monument of its projectors. The following is the letter in full :

" You said you saw in your local paper that I was the originator of the idea of the Hennepin Canal project: - To give you the moving cause, I must go back a' few years prior ; to that time. My father's name was Peter Galer ; he had ten children. I was the fourth. I was said to be the first white child born in Fairneld County, Ohio; my birthplace was near Lancaster, and in the year 1807, August 20. My father moved to Licking County, Ohio, when I was one year old, where I lived

While in Ohio (in 1825) on the 4th of July, at what was called the Licking Summits on the Erie & Ohio Canal I saw Gov. Morrow take out the first wheelbarrow load of dirt from the canal. Shortly after I hired as a common laborer to work on the canal at $12 per month, but by taking the part of a boy that the superintendent of the job was abusing, the superintendent was discharged and I was given his place. From that time I superintended the job until the canal was completed. I then engaged in building sawmills. There was a reservoir to feed the summit level and south of that a deep cut that for three miles averaged thirty -three feet digging. From the circumstance of heavy rains, and seaps in the banks, it kept washing and slipping in until a boat half loaded could not pass through the deep cut. About .that time the reservoir broke, and they could not get anyone to repair it permanently, so they sent thirty-five miles to me for me to try what I could do. After I spent several hundred dollars in repairing, I originated the idea of a new reservoir on the west of the old one. The bank of the old reservoir was the tow path of the canal. There were several thousand of acres of swamp land that I proposed to utilize for the new reservoir with a lock at its north side, also one at the south end of the deep cut, thereby raising the water twelve feet in the deep cut. I reported this plan at headquarters and it was approved and carried out. That was my experience at canaling at Ohio.

As I said before, I crossed the Illinois River at Hennepin on the 20th of August, 1834. I was in company with my parents, four sisters and three brothers. We went up Robinson's River or Bureau through what is now called Tiskilwa and settled on Center Grove Prairie. In September, 1834, I took my blanket and gun and viewed the country through from Hennepin to the Mississippi River, near Rook Island, and thought it a natural pass for a canal, as there was a depression all the way across with high land on either side. I reported my discovery but was much ridiculed for holding such ideas. In October following my oldest brother, John Galer, helped to review the route, and I talked with Dr. A. Langworthy about the project. At first he made very light of the subject, but on my showing him the advantages that would accrue to him if it was carried out, his having property at Indiantown, now Tiskilwa, he began to see that there might be dollars and cents in it, and so he joined in with me, and I appointed a meeting in Hennepin, where I gave my views on the canal project, and the doctor made a good speech. My plan was only for a common canal to be taken out of the river at the head of the Lake DePue BO as to have that for a harbor, and also to avoid much overflow of the river. I also planned to have a dam across Green River at the narrows where New Bedford now is, and use it for a reservoir to feed the summit level and put the feeder into the lake on the south side of Devil's Grove, so it would feed the canal both ways, until other supplies could be got from ' the Bureau and Green River further down on either end of the canal. We had circulars printed, and finally got a bill through the Legislature for a company to undertake the project; but the State was deeply involved, and the Michigan & Illinois Canal being delayed, the subject was dropped until the country around Rock Island had settled quite thickly, when a company changed the canal to a railroad, and the Chicago & Hock Island Railroad was put through almost directly over my old route. The railroad becomiDg exorbitant in freight charges, the canal project was again revived and carried up to Congress by Hawley, and was known as Hawley's canal bill."

This communication is to the point as to who was the first active worker in the project of extending the canal from Heunepin to Bock Island. It is more than a generation ago this movement had its inception. It was perhaps chimerical at that time, but since then millions of people have become deeply interested in the subject of cheap transportation, and it is now both feasible and possible to carry out the original idea of extension that was agitated as a necessity so long ago.