PROGRESS AND RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES.
Added to the mass of testimony already presented, relative to the rapid rise, and present power and position of the United States among the nations of the earth, the following facts may be worthy of notice: “Sixty years ago there was hardly a craft larger than an Indian canoe on the great western lakes. In 1841, the lake trade amounted to $65,000,000; in 1851, to $300,000,000; and in 1864, to $550,000,000; and it bids fair in 1871 to reach the enormous sum of one thousand million dollars.” Should time and peace continue till 1871, this estimate will doubtless be verified. Trade from nothing to one thousand millions of dollars in a little over sixty years, shows a development unequalled in any other portion, or in any other age of the world. Our resources in the single item of coal shows that nature has not in this respect dealt sparingly with this favored land. “The coal fields of America cover over 225,000, square miles; an area equal to twenty-eight such States as Massachusetts. One cubic mile will furnish seven millions of tons annually for a thousand years. At this rate our coal will last sixty thousand years.” The view taken by a popular divine, and expressed before a popular audience, is found in the following extract from a sermon by Bishop Thomson, preached less than a year since in New York. How can we suppose that a nation equal to the universal empires of Greece and Rome, a nation which was to have the last and brightest light of the gospel in its course around the world, should be passed over in utter silence by the book of prophecy? The facts herewith given do not prove that this nation is noted in prophecy; but the fact that it is so noticed, clothes these facts with startling interest, and gives them a striking significance. “The progress of our own country must be especially grand. With what strides has it advanced!” A little more than a hundred years ago, Wolfe fought Montcalm on the heights of Abraham, and Canada and the West were then French and Papal, and there was no civilization north of the lakes nor west of the Father of Waters, save a few French settlements and Catholic mission stations. The United States contained only a million and a half of colonists under the British Crown, and northwest of the Ohio, where now is the very heart of the Republic, was set down in maps as lands unknown. Even Kentucky had not been penetrated by the pale-faced hunter. Now behold the grand inheritance, with fifty-one hundred and twenty miles of sea-coast, having harbors unexcelled, and rivers longer than the Volga, and more beautiful than the Rhine; in territorial extent scarcely less than all the Empires, States, and Republics, of Europe, and fully equal to the Macedonian empire under Alexander, or the Roman under Cæsar; in population already exceeding that of Great Britain, and nearly equal to that of France; in agricultural wealth unsurpassed, having a single valley that could victual the whole world; in climate comprising every variety, from the region of perpetual snow to the fiery heats of the tropics; and in mineral treasure rich beyond all description, from the lakes to the Gulf, and from ocean to ocean!” The Mining Telegraph estimates that in the Sierra Nevada range and adjacent territory alone one thousand quartz mills of a capacity for crushing fifty tons each day could be employed, and, taking the yield at $250 per ton, this would add to the wealth of the nation $12,500,000 a day, or $4,000,000,000 per annum. Coal, more important than gold, abounds. I was thought extravagant when I said to my British cousins that in one of our coal fields we could, if it were excavated, drop all England. But our coal fields cover an area of 225,000 square miles, sufficient to receive England, Wales, Scotland, and all the other islands in the British seas, and have 102,450 square miles left. If each cubic mile would furnish 700,000,000 of tons annually for a thousand years, as is supposed, our machinery will not soon be stopped.”