Growth of the Great West.
Judge Meekin, of Minnesota, in a recent speech on the subject of mail service between the head waters of lake Superior and the Pacific ocean, stated some remarkable facts in relation to the wonderful growth of the west. He said, that in 1816, the first effort in good faith was made to navigate the lakes. In 1841 their commerce reached an aggregate of sixty-five millions of dollars. In 1856 it swelled to the enormous sum of six hundred and eight millions. Cities in the meantime arose on their shores like magic, vieing in population and business with others that had been growing for centuries. Buffalo, Chicago, Millwaukie, Cleveland, Detroit, and others are classed among the cities and commercial centres of the world. In a speech delivered in New York more than twenty years ago, Mr. Webster, in alluding to this subject, said: ‐These great lakes, stretching away many thousands of miles, not in a straight line, but with turns and deflections, as if designed to reach, by water communication, the greater number of important points through a region of vast extent, cannot but arrest the attention of any one who looks upon the map. They lie connected but variously placed, and interspersed as if with studied variety of form and direction over that part of the country. They were made for man and admirably adapted for his use and convenience.‑ ‐Looking,‑ says he, ‐over our whole country, comprehending in our survey the Atlantic coast, with its thick population, its advanced agriculture, its extended commerce, its manufactures and machanic arts, its varieties of communication, its wealth and its general improvments; and looking then into the interior, to the immense tracts of fresh, fertile, and cheap lands, bounded by so many lakes, and watered by so many magnificent streams, let me ask if such a map was ever before presented to the eye of any statesman as a theatre for the exercise of his wisdom and patriotism? And let me ask, too, if any man is fit to act a part on such a theatre who does not comprehend the whole of it within the scope of his policy and embrace it all as his country!‑—Sel.