It is not surprising that a first attempt to collect and embody this information should have fallen short of complete success at all points. The wonder is, rather, that so many facts should have been obtained, of a reliable character, as are given in the preceding tables. The deficiencies are few in number; and had more time been devoted to the collection of this particular class of facts in the Cuyahoga, Miami, and Vicksburg districts, they would have been hardly worth mentioning. There are several centres of interior commerce and navigation, at which it would seem of interest to know the radiation of trade and travel, as shown by natural and artificial channels of communication, and the boats and other descriptions of conveyance in or upon them. One of these centres is at the head of the Ohio river, another at the foot of Lake Erie, a third at the head of Lake Michigan, and a fourth on the Mississippi, below the outflow of the Illinois and the Missouri rivers. The heavy commerce that centres midway of the Ohio valley, though reaching up the Muskingum, the Wabash, the Cumberland, and the Mississippi, by natural streams, and back into Ohio and Indiana by artificial channels, is more direct in its main lines, which extend to Pittsburg in one direction, and to New Orleans in another. In the first and last of the four districts named, the number of boats and men, and the amount of tonnage, employed on each of the several streams to which the trade of those districts extends, as well as the travel upon each, are shown by the following subdivisions of the whole number of boats therein severally enrolled. The main trade of each of the other four districts named is in a direct line from the second, nearly north and south, by Lake Michigan and the Illinois river, and the Illinois and Michigan canal; and from the third, in a direction indicated by the course of Lakes Erie and Huron and that of the Erie canal. The points embraced by the ramifications of travel, however, are more numerous; and hence the following subdivisions are intended only to include them, and show the total number of passengers who arrived at and departed from the principal port of each of these districts, by the several descriptions of conveyance mentioned, during the period included in all the preceding tables-the year ending 30th June, 1851. Showing a recorded movement at these four commercial centres of the interior, (of the Northwest, indeed,) of one million six hundred and fifty-six thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven persons in the course of a year, where the resident population is but 217,946. No fact can better illustrate the activity of our people. By the national census for the year 1850, the population of each of the four cities at which this movement is shown, is stated as follows: |