portance are not fully known. The copper, which covers the great dome of the Capitol at Washington, was manufactured from the ore of these mines. In the city a chemical laboratory on a large scale is in operation, and manufactures almost all kinds of chemical preparations used in the arts and in medicine, such as alum, vitriol, aqua fortis, chrome yellow, and the acids generally. Chrome in its crude state, so rare in most parts of the world, is found in great quantities in Baltimore county. A white lead manufactory works about 250 tons of the raw material annually, some of which is brought from Missouri, and the remainder from a mine recently discovered in Wythe county, Virginia, which is the best, and of an uncommonly pure quality. Glass, shot, iron casts, printers' types, pottery, sugar refining, distilling, saddlery, leather, hats, house furniture, oilcloth carpeting, agricultural implements, and various other manufactures, which we cannot here enumerate, are prosecuted in Baltimore, give employment to a large number of persons, and add to the wealth of the town.

In looking over the brief historical and statistical sketch here given, it will be seen that the rapid and prosperous growth of Baltimore may be referred to three or four prominent causes, in many respects peculiar to that city. In the first place, the local situation of the town ensured to it extraordinary advantages, in presenting the nearest market to the western country, and especially in concentrating to one point a great proportion of the trade of the Chesapeake, which was before divided among several small ports. Wealthy planters formerly shipped their produce, and imported European and West India supplies in their own names. As the city increased, they found it more convenient to seek a market there, both to dispose of their produce and make their purchases. This gave employment to agents, brokers, mer. chants, shipbuilders, and seamen, whose wages and profits, derived from this business of effecting the exchange between the planter and foreign manufacturer, helped to build up the town. Secondly, the fast sailing vessels built in the Chesapeake, and nowhere else, contributed more than any one cause, probably, to the unexampled prosperity of trade at times, when other commercial cities of the Union were either languishing, or making but a slow progress. A third cause

was the almost exclusive intercourse with St Domingo for a long period, when commerce to that island was exceedingly profitable. Fourthly, the two great staples, flour and tobacco, for which the demand is always sure, and the supply unfailing. And lastly we may add, as by no means the least cause, the enterprising spirit of the people, much more energetic in its combined and continued action, than that of any other city in the United States, for reasons already assigned.

These causes, some of them from their very nature, and others from the change of times and circumstances, do not any longer exist in the same force and bearing as formerly; and in looking to the future progress of the city, no accurate predictions can be made from the results of the past. The trade of the Chesapeake, enough of itself to support a large city, will always centre there, but this trade will hereafter be steady and uniform, unmarked by such sudden changes as occurred in the early days of the rising capital. It will sustain itself, and increase, as the inhabitants multiply on the borders of the Bay, and in the country watered by the rivers flowing into it, and thus secure to Baltimore permanently from this quarter the advantages already gained. As to swift sailing vessels, their superiority will no doubt continue to be felt in making quick voyages, but this superiority in times of peace and tranquillity is of comparatively little consequence. The great benefits of these vessels can be experienced only when commerce is shackled by the restrictions of war, and the seas are infested with hostile navies and privateers. The West India trade will always be profitable to Baltimore, as it takes off provisions, the supply of which is inexhaustible, and the demand large, and returns coffee and sugar, products of very extensive and increasing consumption in the United States.

Of all these and other ordinary sources of commerce Baltimore will retain a full proportion, but the advantages, which may be considered peculiar to this city, and on which its future prosperity will very much depend, are its uncommon facilities for manufactures, beyond those of any other place in the middle and southern States, and the profitable trade that will necessarily be kept up in manufactured articles with the western country and South America. By means of good roads the communication with the interior is direct and easy.

Between the years 1805 and 1810 three turnpikes were made by chartered companies, leading from the city to different points in Pennsylvania and the western part of Maryland. These were called the York, Reistertown, and Fredericktown turnpikes, and were built in the most thorough and substantial manner, to resist the weight and wear of the enormous wagons in which flour, wheat, and other produce are usually brought to market. The average cost of these roads was from 8,000 to 10,000 dollars a mile. More recently four other turnpike roads have been finished, the Washington, the Falls, Belle Air, and Havre de Grace, making in the whole, seven broad and well constructed avenues proceeding from the city to various parts of the country.

The great national road from Wheeling to Cumberland has been continued by the banks in Baltimore, and three other banks in the western districts of Maryland. They were required by the state to make fiftyeight miles of this road on the same construction as the national road. This duty was imposed as a condition of the renewal of their charters in 1814, and the average cost was something more than 8000 dollars a mile. The banks are allowed to establish toll gates. A break of a few miles between the termination of this road and of the Fredericktown turnpike has since been finished, and now the line of communication between Baltimore and Wheeling is complete, over one of the best roads in the world.*

Notwithstanding the new direction, which steamboat navigation has given to the trade of the west, and notwithstanding the quick intercourse thus established between New Orleans and the upper country, yet the great states of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, will always look mainly to the east for their market. In addition to the distance of these states

* Some idea may be formed of the intercourse, which has existed between the tide waters of the Chesapeake and Delaware, and the Ohio, by the following statements. In the year ending May, 1818, there passed through the gate at Chesnut Ridge, on the road leading from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, 2698 teams of six horses, 2412 of five horses, and 281 of four horses, amounting in the whole to 5391 teams, none of which was less than four horses. During the same year it was calculated that 10 wagons a day left Philadelphia for the west, the freight of each averaging $200, making the annual amount for freight $730,000. In the month of October, 1817, there passed through the turnpike gate near Bedford, Pennsylvania, 4419 persons going to the west, and 2979 coming east. This was before the road from Baltimore to Wheeling was finished.

from New Orleans, which is the centre of commercial action, the south western states will always have the advantage of them by anticipating the market, both on account of their proximity, and from the circumstance, that the Ohio is closed with ice for some weeks in the year while the navigation of the Mississippi is unobstructed. In short, whatever view we take of the subject, nothing is more obvious, than that, if a water communication is opened from the western to the atlantic states, nearly the whole trade of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana will flow in this direction. Their produce will be sold here in exchange for our home manufactures and foreign imports. Large droves of live stock, especially hogs, are now driven every year from the banks of the Ohio in Kentucky, to Baltimore, in preference to being packed on the spot and sent down the river by a more speedy conveyance to the New Orleans market. The New York canal will draw through Lake Erie for the present the produce of the northern parts of Ohio and Indiana; but when the magnificent project of threading the Alleganies with a canal, and uniting the Ohio, nay, the great lakes themselves, with the Chesapeake, shall be put in execution, which, since recent surveys would seem to prove it practicable, may be expected at no distant day, then the entire trade of these three states will flow into this channel, as being the shortest and most expeditious route to the tide waters of the Atlantic.

In this event Baltimore will inevitably become the chief mart of western produce, and possess an almost exclusive privilege of sending over the mountains supplies of home manufactures and foreign products. Georgetown, Washington, and Alexandria will doubtless be greatly benefited by such a communication to the west, but the local situation of these towns is not such, as to enable any one or all of them to gain the ascendency already held by Baltimore. A canal from the Potomac to the city will remove the obstacles of distance, and in this respect will place these several towns on an equal footing. But without reference to this brilliant, and as some think rather dubious scheme of joining the great waters of the east and west, Baltimore must in any event derive a great and an increasing profit from its intercourse. with the interior, partly for reasons already suggested, and partly from the fact, that manufacturing establishments cannot

be advantageously erected on a large scale, either to the east or the west of the mountains. From the Potomac to the Gulf of Mexico, the country on the seaboard is alluvial and level to the distance of a hundred miles from the coast. Over this space there is probably not a single water fall, that could carry the wheel of a cotton factory; and when you arrive at the first ridge of original formation, the ascent is commonly so gradual, that but little water power can be gained. If you reach the mountains, where the fall is more sudden, the streams have become so much diminished, and so uncertain, as to offer no encouragement to manufacturing operations; and what is a still more serious obstacle, you are at a point so remote from water communication, that the expense of transporting the raw material would be sufficient to swallow up all the profits to be derived from the best local advantages. These remarks apply with very few exceptions to the whole range of the southern states, and show very clearly that manufactures will never be attempted there on any other than a very limited scale.

The same view may be taken, though with more restrictions, of the great valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio, as well as of the regions embraced in the immense range of the Alleganies. It is a fect universally admitted, we believe, that the geological conformation of the country throughout the west is such, as to give but a very little fall to the rivers, and consequently to afford a comparatively small amount of water power. Moreover, the expense of procuring the raw material, and of establishing and carrying on factories, will be such, that agricultural labor, which shall at the same time enhance the value of lands, and procure manufactured articles at a reasonable price, will for many years at least be much more profitable to the western capitalist. Whoever has wandered among the bold and majestic ridges of the Alleganies in the western counties of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, must have been forcibly struck with the manner in which the streams of water find their way among them. From Catskill to Georgia this range of mountains is composed almost uniformly of parallel ridges, running from north east to south west, broken here and there apparently to let the small streams pass through; and these, after creeping silently and quietly along the bases of the mountains, by many and intri