The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1876-11-09
A VISION OF GREATNE Ess.

the success OF Eads. lie Dullt the cOStl-
est bridge and the grandest the world ever
saw, and to the genius and mathematical
and engineering skill of a modest German
named Fladd he owes this triumph. But
Eads deserves all honor. he had the gen
ius to command genus and learning, and
the great st. Louis bridge is an enduring
and proper monument to his fame. But
bridging the Mississippi is an infinitely
easier task than the management of its cur
rents and shaping its channels, and Eads,
it seems, is no nearer the end of his labors
of Sysiphus than when he began to build
walls of stone and willows within which to
conine the restless, resistless and lawless
river. And even if Eads achieved ends
aimed at, another and another Eads must be
born forever to define a route for the
mighty volume of mud and water as it adds
to the extent of the continent and con-
tracts the area of the Gulf OF Mexico. In
view of these facts many of the most in
teligent citizens of New Orleans, and of
cities along the Mississippi and its tribu-
taries have organized chartered corpora
ton with capital of five millions for the
| purpose of excavating a slack-water ship
canal from New Orleans itself TO deep
water in Barrataria bay. Tugboats that
have preyed upon New Orleans commerce
till commerce died of the horrible plague
will themselves be no more. 1t is the
owners of these tugs that give protracted
vitality to Eads, and then, too, the whole
power of Tom Scott and other railway
managers and corporations interested in
destroying New Orleans and in closing
finally the mouth of the Mississippi, natu-
rally adhere to Ea1s. If his jetties deepen
the mouth of the river the difficulties
incident to the ascent of the mighty stream.
augmented by the augmented force of the
current within the jetties, will only be ag-
gravated, and it will still cost vessel Of
five thousand ton burthen ten thousand
dollars to go in and out of the Mississippi
But Elds may fail. Unless he build his
jetties even to Yucatan or Cuba he may con-
fess even now that the Mississippi can no
more be hedged in than damned up with
bulrushes. Therefore the adoption of John
Cowdon's scheme by the corporation re-
ferred to, involving not only the construc-
tion of this ship canal from New Orleans to
Barrataria bay, but of another from Mo
bile inside the ''keys" to Florida and across
this peninsula to Brunswick. Meanwhile,
the Legislatures of Tennessee, Mississippi,
Alabama and Georgia are to transfer to
Cowdon's corporation the use of five thou
sand convicts now competing with the me-
chanics of those States. These felons are
proposed to be employed in the construc-
ton of great canal from Memphis diago-
nally across the iron and coal fields of Ala
bama even to Brunswick. Brunswick would
then furnish the world with the cheapest
coal, iron and cotton on the globe, and
Kansas and Missouri, bS means of rail-
way now dragging its slow length towards
the Southeast and striking. the Mississippi
at Memphis, would give bread and .ba-
con to the richest of manufacturing and
cotton-growing peoples. Such is the
revolution that John Cowdon, the hydro
dynamic philosopher of the valley of
the Mississippi, would inaugurate. He
proposes, further, to cut the Tehuante-
pee canal across Mexico, and then
Huntington's system of California roads
will be forced tc connect with
numberless lines of steamers from Gal
weston and New Orleans. These purposes
of John Cowdon have long been deemed
visionary; but now Jefferson Davis and
leading merchants and capitalists of the
lower valley of the Mississippi have as
sented to Cowdon's purposes, and one OF
the strongest combinations effected in the
South is this which undertakes to build the
New Orleans and Barrataria bay canal. Capt.
Cowdon, that the plans of his company
may be accepted by the people, by States
and by the Congress, will visit Europe that
his plans may be considered by NJ. de Les
seps, the protector and builder of the Suez
canal. 1t is said that the great French en-
gineer may accompany Cowdon 10 the
United States, and if he approve Cowdon,s
purposes there is money enough at Lesseps'
command to relieve the South of that COM
mercial dependence which Cowdon believes
Eads tolls, in behalf of his bridge company
and its railways, to perpe.uate. In this
we bslieve he is unjust to Mr. Eads, but
there can be no two sides to the question
of Eads's and Cowdon's competing plans
for the relief of the valley of the Mississippi
from that commercial thralldom which en-
slaves and lmpoverishes the people and de-
stroys our commercial marts. Calves
ton and cities along the southern
coast of Texas would be enriched by his
ship canal, which lessons the commercial
distance between New Orleans and Calves
ton nearly one-half and for the reason that it
would lessen the cost of traversing this dis
tsnce in sailing vessels more than half.
But the great end effected would be dis
covered in the reversal of the commercial
map of the South. Trade and traffic and
travel from the Ohio and Missouri and the
whole wealth of the country on either side |
of the Mississippi, the very day that Cow
don's slack-water canal may be opened, |
would be IN ned south from the the East. |
The new and the old Northwest would |
alike come down the river and down the |
railways across Arkansas and Texas to find |
access to Europe, the West Indies, South |
America and Mexico, through Southern |
seaports and through these would the Sou b |
receive the products and merchapdise of |
the exterior world. 1t is a splendid vision |
of a magnificent future that rises up with |
dense fogs that hang moodily and |
drearily over the tortuous course OF the |
majestic river of the West before the |
dreamy eyes of the hydro-dynamic philosc-
pher Of the lewlands.
THE young women OF Houston have Q |