The idea of such connection had occupied the minds of sagacious men for many years, foremost among whom Avcre Elkanah Watson, General Philip Schuyler, Christopher Colles, and Gouverneur Morris ; and thirty years before the great work was commenced, Joel 15arlow, one of the early American poets, wrote in his Vision of Columbus --

" He saw as widel}- spreads the imchannelled plain, Where inland realms for ages bloomed in vain, Canals, long winding, ope a watery flight. And distant streams, and seas, and lakes unite.

" From fair Albania tow'rd the fading sun, Back through the midland lengtheuing channels nin ; Meet the far lalces, their beauteous towns that lave, And Hudson joined to broad Ohio's wave."

THE HUDSON.

The Erie Canal enters the Hudson at Albany. Its western terminus is the city of Buffalo, at the east end of Lake Erie. The length of the canal is 360 miles, and its original width was forty feet, with depth sufficient to bear boats of eighty tons burden. It was completed in the year 1825, at a cost to the State of nearly eight millions of dollars. The business demands upon it warranting an enlargement to seventy feet in widtli, work with that result in view has been in progress for several years. It flows through the entire length of the beautiful Mohawk valley, crosses

CANAL BA.SIX AT ALIiAXV.

the Mohawk Uiver several times, and enters Albany at the north end of the city.

Near where the last aqueduct of the canal crosses the ^Mohawk River, the rapids above Cohoes Falls commence. The Indians had a touching legend connected with these rapids, that exhibits, in brief sentences, a vivid picture of the workings of the savage mind.