Second Line. Pennsylvania Canal.

What is called the Pennsylvania canal is a long line of 400 miles, starting from Philadelphia, and ending at Pittsburg on the Ohio. It was begun simultaneously with several other works, at the expense of the state of Pennsylvania, in 1826. It is not entirely a canal; from Philadelphia a railroad 81 miles in length, extends to the Susquehanna at Columbia. To the Columbia railroad, succeeds a canal, 172 miles in length, which ascends the Susquehanna and the Juniata to the foot of the mountains at Holidaysburg. Thence the Portage railroad passes over the mountain to Johnstown, a distance of 37 miles, by means of several inclined planes constructed on a grand scale, with an inclination sometimes exceeding one tenth, which does not, however, deter travellers from going over them. From Johnstown a second canal goes to Pittsburg, 104 miles. This route is subject to the inconvenience of three transhipments, one at Columbia at the end of the railroad from Philadelphia, and the others at the ends of the Portage railroad, one of these may be avoided by means of two canals constructed by incorporated companies, namely, the Schuylkill canal, which extends up the river of that name, and the Union canal, which forms a junction between the upper Schuylkill and the Susquehanna. The distance from Philadelphia to Pittsburg by this route is 435 miles, or 35 miles more than by the other route.

The Pennsylvania canal, begun in 1826, was finished in 1834. The State has connected with this work a general system of canalization, which embraces all the principal rivers, and especially the Susquehanna, with its two great branches (the North Branch and the West Branch), and also works preparatory to a canal connecting Pittsburg with Lake Erie, at Erie, a town founded by our Canadian countrymen, and by them called Presqu’île. Pennsylvania has executed, then, in all about 820 miles of canals and railroads, of which 118 are railroads, at a cost of about 25,000,000 dollars, exclusive of sums paid for interest. Average cost per mile, 35,000 dollars: average cost per mile, of canals, 32,500; average cost per mile of railroads, 48,000.

This is much more than the cost of the New York works, although the dimensions of the works are the same, and the natural difficulties were not greater in one case than in the other; it is owing to bad management in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvanians had no Clinton to guide them. An unwise economy, forced upon the Canal Commissioners by the legislature, prevented them from securing the services of able engineers, and for the sake of saving some thousands of dollars in salaries, they have been obliged to spend millions in repairing what was badly done, or in doing badly what more able hands would have executed well at less cost.