were "vastly inferior." Six hundred dollars was the amount
appropriated for a brief survey, and Congress was asked to vote
aid for the construction of the "Buffalo-Utica Canal." The matter
was widely talked about but action was delayed. Doubt as to the
best route to be pursued caused some discussion. If the western
terminus were to be located on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the
Oswego, as some advocated, would produce not make its way to
Montreal instead of to New York? In 1810 a new committee was
appointed and, though their report favored the paralleling of the
course of the Mohawk and Oswego rivers, their engineer, James
Geddes, gave strength to the party which believed a direct canal
would best serve the interests of the State. It is worth noting
that Livingston and Fulton were added to the committee in 1811.

The hopes of outside aid from Congress and adjacent States met
with disappointment. In vain did the advocates of the canal in
1812 plead that its construction would promote "a free and
general intercourse between different parts of the United States,
tend to the aggrandizement and prosperity of the country, and
consolidate and strengthen the Union." The plan to have the
Government subsidize the canal by vesting in the State of New
York four million acres of Michigan land brought out a protest
from the West which is notable not so much because it records the
opposition of this section as because it illustrates the
shortsightedness of most of the arguments raised against the New
York enterprise. The purpose of the canal, the detractors
asserted, was to build up New York City to the detriment of
Montreal, and the navigation of Lake Ontario, whose beauty they
touchingly described, was to be abandoned for a "narrow, winding
obstructed canal...for an expense which arithmetic dares not