The daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1848-1851, 1851-02-04

delegations from the North and South, without re.
gard to politics. They have repaired to Washing
ton to urge upon Congress modification OF the Ia
riff. Their consultations among themselves and win
members of the two Houses, authorize reasona-
BILE expectation of change Of the following effect
Il An ad Uaoena duty of forty per cent to be iald on
iron assessed the average cost for the preceding
ten years. Second: A restoration OF the free iist
of 1912, which contains clause levying duty Of
five cents on wooens costing under seven cents,
and admits free dye stufs and other articles neces-
sary in carpet and calico manufactures. Third:
A declaration that the duty shall be assessed on
the value of the imported article, at the time and
place of expectation; a provision in accordance
with the real intention of the Act OF 49, but
evaded under a decision of Judge Woodbury..
Fourth: The making imported goods pay ten per
cent. more duty than the raw materials OF which
they are composed This last proposition is opposed
bv MANY democratic members, and no definite de-
cison has yet been had upon it. The other modi-
ications will, in all probability, be concured in
since they are judged in liberal spirit
THE MASON RoUeE CLAIM.-Mr. Morse the
other day did fight for his constituents and carried
to its third reading the bill to grant e-emptions
to the settlers on the Maison Rouge Claim if the
KEY WEsr.-From long letter in the Charles
ton News, we gather some interesting facts IN
relation to this speck, so well known and dreaded
by our merchants.
1t is the nearest spot to the Equator in the United
States. The mercury has not been below 500 in
many years, yet fires add to the comfort OF the in
habtants. The average annual rain is twenty-six
inches and three.fifths falls in August September
and October. 1t is directly opposite Havana, and
only ninety-one miles distant.
A glance at the map will show, that Cuba and
the Bahamas upon one side, and the Florida keys
and shores upon the other, margin passage from
sixty to ninety miles wide, through which vast
proportion of our countrys wealth necessarily seeks
market. 1t will show that the mouth OF the Mis-
sissippi is not at the Balize, but at the Tortugas
and Key West, and that the thirteen hundred thous
and bales of Cotton and all the other immense
agricultural wealth which will leave the Western
States during the year 1851, must pass through a
passage which can be bridged by six steamers.
The harbors of Tortugas and Key West are sixty
miles apart
AT the Tortugas we are constructing magnif
cent work, which will cover the entire area of Gar
den Key 1t will be castle of eighty feet above
tide water, and capable of mounting three hundred
guns. At Key West large quadrangular work is
in of construction, which stands in eight feet
water, about eleven hundred feet from the shore,
and will completely command the harbor. These
works national of course, but the interest of the
great West is specially involved in their COM
pletion than in the defences OF the Mississippi
itself.
Professor Agassiz is busily engaged in collecting
and preserving specimens of natural history. He
is delighted with the thousand strange and beauti-
full developments of nature, and expresses the wish
that he could devote years to their examination
Three distict parties of the Coast Survey are
now hard at work, and we anticipate with pleasure
that their labors will deprive rock and reef
bound coast of its terrors and scatter flowers in
the path of their navigator