New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [192]
“See, Frank, here are the Appalachian Mountains, beginning way down in Georgia, and extending all the way up the eastern side of the country. In North Carolina they become the Smoky Mountains. Then they run right up through Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and into New York, where they become the Catskills first, and then the Adirondacks. The old Thirteen Colonies were all on the east side of the Appalachians. But the other side is the future, Frank. The great American West.” And he had grandly swept his hand across the map all the way to the Pacific.
The parts of the map that already belonged to the United States were colored. The territory in the far west, beyond the Rocky Mountains, was not. After the War of 1812, the Spanish had given up Florida, but their huge Mexican empire still swept all the way up the Pacific coast until it came to Oregon Country, the open territory which America and Britain controlled together. The vast swathe of territory east of the Rockies, however, from Canada all the way down to New Orleans, was colored. This was the Louisiana Purchase, as big as the old thirteen states put together, and which Jefferson had bought from Napoleon for a song. “Napoleon was a great general,” Weston told Frank, “but a lousy businessman.” Most of the Louisiana Purchase hadn’t been organized into states yet, though Weston believed that that would come in time. It was the nearer west, however, under the Great Lakes, to which he had directed his son’s attention.
“Look at these new states, Frank,” he said. “Ohio, Indiana, Illinois—with Michigan territory above them, and the states of Kentucky and Tennessee below. They’re rich in everything, especially grain. The future breadbasket of the world. But New York doesn’t benefit. All the grain, and the hogs and the other goods from the west are flowing south, down the Ohio River, then down the Mississippi”—he traced the line of the huge river systems with his finger—“until they finally come to New Orleans for shipment.” He smiled. “So that, my boy, is why we have built the Erie Canal.”
Geography had certainly been kind to the New York men. Up near Albany, on the western side of the River Hudson where the Mohawk River came to join it, the huge, broad gap between the Catskills and the Adirondack Mountains offered a viable terrain through which to lay a canal. From the Hudson, the canal ran westward all the way to the edge of the Great Lakes in the Midwest.
“Here,” said Weston, “just below Lake Ontario and above Lake Erie, lies the town of Buffalo. All kinds of produce come in there. And the canal ends just below Buffalo.”
“So now we can use the canal to ship goods east instead of south?”
“Exactly. Bringing loads overland is expensive, and slow. But barges filled with grain can get from Buffalo to New York in only six days. As for the cost … that drops from a hundred to only five dollars a ton. It’ll change everything. The wealth of the West will flow through New York.”
“Not so good for New Orleans, I guess.”
“No … Well, that’s their problem.”
Yesterday, Weston and Frank had spent the day inspecting the final sections of the canal. Those had been happy hours. An engineer had shown them round. Frank had been doing what he liked best, and Weston had been proud to see that the engineer was impressed with the boy’s questions.
But today there was something else he wanted to share with his son.
He had introduced the subject already, once or twice, during their journey. As they started up the Hudson, he had looked back, past the stately cliffs of the Palisades to where, in the distance, New York harbor was a haze of golden light, and remarked: “It’s a fine sight, isn’t it, Frank?” But it had been hard to tell what the boy was thinking. As they came to West Point, and stared at the splendor of the Hudson Valley as