An ample supply of water-power, with coal and building stone,
have contributed to this prosperity, of which advantage has been taken to
improve the streets, thoroughfares, and public buildings. The use of a light
yellow building stone for the houses has a very pleasant appearance after the
bricks of Manchester and Liverpool.
The Huddersfield Canal, which connects the Humber and Mersey, is a very
extraordinary piece of work. It is carried through and over a backbone of
hills by stairs of more than thirty locks in nine miles, and a tunnel three
miles in length. At one place it is 222 yards below the surface, and at
another 656.5 feet above the level of the sea.
When we examine such works, so profitable to the community, so unprofitable
to the projectors, how can we doubt the capability of our country to hold its
own in any commercial race? Men make a country, not accidents of soil or
climate, mines or forests. For centuries California and Central America have
been in the hands of an Iberian race, fallow. A few months of Anglo-Saxon
rule, and land and sea are boiling with fervid elements of cultivation,
commerce, and civilization. With time the dregs will disappear, and churches
and schools, cornfields and fulling-mills, will supersede grizzly bears and
wandering Indians.
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