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Show 1836- 1837] Fbgg's Far West 49 is hardly perceptible but for the increased rapidity of the current, which varies from ten to fourteen miles an hour. 6 Owing to the height of the freshet, this was the case at the time when we descended them, and there was a wild air of romance about the dark rushing waters: and the green woodlands upon either shore, overshadowed as they were by the shifting light and shade of the flitting clouds, cast • It is only at high stages of the river that boats even of a smaller class can pass over the Falls. At other times they go through the " Louisville and Portland Canal." In 1804 the Legislature of Kentucky incorporated a company to cut a canal around the falls. Nothing effectual, however, beyond surveys, was done until 1895, when on the 12th of January of that year the Louisville and Portland Canal Company was incorporated by an act of the legislature, with a capital of $ 600,000, in shares of $ 100 each, with perpetual succession. 3665 of the shares of the^ company are in the hands of individuals, about seventy in number, residing in the following states: New- Hampshire, Massachusetts, New- York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri, and 2335 shares belong to the government of the United States. In December, 1825, contracts were entered into to complete the work of this canal within two years, for about $ 375,000, and under these contracts the work was commenced in March, 1826. Many unforeseen difficulties retarded the work until the dose of the year 1828. At this time the contractors failed; new contracts were made at advanced prices, and the canal was finally opened for navigation December 5th, 1830. When completed it cost about $ 750,000. Owing to the advanced season at which it was opened, the deposites of alluvial earth at the lower extremity of the canal, or debouchure, could not be removed; and also from the action of the floods during the succeeding severe winter on the stones that had been temporarily deposited on the sides of the canal, causing them to be precipitated into the canal, it was not used to the extent that it otherwise would have been. During the year 1831, 406 steamboats, 46 keelboats, and 357 flatboats, measuring 76,323 tons, passed through the locks, which are about one fourth the number that would have passed if all the obstructions had been removed. The Louisville and Portland Canal is about two miles in length; is intended for steamboats of the largest class, and to overcome a fall of 24 feet, occasioned by an irregular ledge of limerock, through which the entire bed of the canal is excavated, a part of it, to the depth of 12 feet, is overlaid with earth. There is one guard and three lift locks combined, all of which have their foundation on the rock. One bridge of stone 240 feet long, with an elevation of 68 feet to top of the parapet wall, and three arches, the centre one of which is semi- elliptical, with a transverse diameter of 66, and a semi- conjugate diameter of 22 feet. The two side arches are segments of 40 feet span. The guard lock is zoo feet long in the clear, with semicircular heads of 26 feet in diameter, 50 feet wide, and 42 feet high, and contains 21,775 perches of mason- work. The solid contents of this lock are equal to 15 common locks, such as are built on the Ohio and New- York |