price or worse motives of others, and we shall subserve the best feelings of patriotism, in bequeathing a rich legacy to those who shall succeed us. With these observations we shall proceed to develop, as briefly as possible, from this address, the advantages which are held out by the scheme now before us. The address states that this city and its environs contain more than sixteen thousand dwelling-houses, and not less than one hundred thousand inhabitants. It is the most populous city in the United States, and is so favourably situated for supplying a great interior, and especially the western country, and from the ability of its merchants to give extensive credits, that it must still increase. Although New York, by its easy access to the ocean at all seasons, and the extensive interior country that depends on it, seems destined to become the largest commercial city on our Atlantic coasts, yet Philadelphia possesses some eminent advantages, in its distance from the alarms of war; in the fertile country that immediately surrounds it; in the vast meadows for the sustenance of horses and cattle, which border the shore of its tide-waters; in the fine clay for making bricks, which abounds in the very ground-plot of the city, and on its borders; in the abundance of building-stone very near it: in the quarries of the finest marble,* and the best lime-stone, which are inexhaustible within ten or fifteen miles of it; in the quantity of boards, scantling, and other lumber, that every year is brought to it; in the quantity of excellent slate for roofing houses, stores, and other buildings: in short, in the plentiful supply of every material for building, and every article necessary for the comfortable support of human life. Wood, for fuel, in dwelling-houses and in manufactories, however, seems to be growing gradually dearer, and in time the supply must become inadequate to the demand. Hence a substitute, in part at least, for the probable deficiency of this article, seems imperiously to be demanded, and happily this substitute is provided, and within the reach of our reasonable exertions, on the head-waters of the Schuylkill, where coal exists in the utmost abundance, and of the finest quality. This city, liberties, and neighbourhood, including the demands of brewers, brick-kilns, and other manufactories within their limits, there can be little doubt, have consumed annually, for several years past, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand cords of fire-wood, which has cost about one million and a quarter of dollars per annum. If half of this heavy expenditure, or one-fourth of it, could be annually saved to the • Specimens of the Pennsylvania marble may be seen in this city, at the shop of Thomas Traquair, in Tenth-street, near Arch. Large quantities of it are exported to England. citizens, it would be a great thing; the saving would amount to as much, or more than all the public taxes they now pay. But how is this to be realized? We answer, by subscribing liberally to the improvement of the navigation of the Schuylkill. By this means the navigation may be speedily accomplished, and the immense beds of coal, with which the county of Schuylkill abounds, will be seen in a very few years floating to this eity. Ten bushels of it give as much heat, and are equal in the consumption, to one cord of oak wood. If the proposed navigation was completed, this coal may be afforded to be sold in this city at the rate of thirty cents per bushel, weighing above eighty pounds, which will be equivalent to reducing the price of oak-wook to three dollars per cord. All the country too near the Schuylkill, which is bare of timber, and all the towns on that river, and on all the tide-waters of the Delaware, will reap the benefit of this reduction in the price of fuel. This coal has little bitumen; it gives no disagreeable smell; it produces no more dust than a wood-fire, to soil furniture, it yields no perceivable smoke: of course houses, where it is used, cannot take fire from foul chimneys. All this is verified in the borough of Reading, where it is now commonly used in families, to such an extent that it has reduced the price of fire-wood at least two dollars per cord. Its fitness for manufactories has been demonstrated, in many places where it is now in use. It has also been found fit for burning bricks and lime, and is now used by several of the malsters and brewers in this city. The transportation of wheat, flour, flaxseed, iron, marble, plaister of Paris, and a multitude of other articles of produce and manufactures, up and down the river, will no doubt be greatly increased, especially when this navigation is connected with the river Susquehanna, by canals or turnpike-roads, where they approach the nearest together. This will probably introduce into the Schuylkill a large proportion of the produce of all the upper country on the wide-spreading branches of that river, comprehending a territory more extensive than either of the states of New Jersey, Vermont, or Maryland. The stockholders who have subscribed, or may subscribe to this improvement, will also have the strongest reason to expect good dividends on their stock, from the tolls arising from the immense quantities of produce that will pass and repass on this river: without mentioning any thing else, the single article of coal will pay so much toll as to afford good dividends. Suppose, as above stated, the city and neighbourhood of Philadelphia now use at least one hundred and sixty thousand cords of wood annually, and that the place of only one half of this quantity should be supplied by coal; and suppose ten bushels of this coal equal to one cord of oak wood, then to supply this deficiency of wood would require eight hundred thousand bushels of coal annually; and allowing twenty-seven bushels of it to weigh a ton, as it does nearly, and as, by the act of incorporation, the company are allowed to charge tolls, not exceeding twelve and a half cents per ton at each lock below, and eight cents per ton above Reading, this would amount to about twelve cents per bushel on the whole route, if there should be twenty-eight locks above, and eight or ten below that borough. This alone would yield a dividend of six per cent per annum upon the sum expended, even supposing it should require six hundred thousand dollars to complete the whole navigation; and they cannot fail to rise as high as the act of incorporation allows them, which is fifteen per cent per annum. Origin of the North American Indians.-M. Julius Von Klaproth has made a curious discovery respecting the American Indians. He has found a long chain of nations and idioms extending from the canal of Queen Charlotte along the north-west coast of America, to Southern Canada, the United States, Louisiana, Florida, the Great and Little Antilles, the Carribee Islands, and Guiana, as far as the river of Amazons, where the languages and idioms are all obviously derived from an original language, which has a great deal of affinity with that of the Samojedes and Kamptchadales. The people all along this vast track, both in their figure and mode of life, have a striking similarity to the free nations in Northern Asia. Mr. Klaproth gives a list of Carribee words which occur in the languages of the Mandshons, the Samojedes, the Korjacks, the Youkaguirs, the Toungouses, the Kamtchadales, the Tchoutchis, &c. In digging a mound at Chilicothe, Ohio, a short time ago, the remains of a man were found. Over the place where his breast was supposed to have been, was a cross and string of beads. The cross was completely converted into verdigris. The trees which grew on this mound were of the same growth as the surrounding woods. Steam Engines.—In a letter to Dr. Ingenhauz, dated from Philadelphia, October 24, 1788, we find the following sentence:-" We have no philosophical news here at present, except that a boat moved by a steam engine, rows itself against the tide in our river, and it is apprehended the construction may be so simplified and improved as to become generally useful?' Arithmetic.-Mr. Von Syngle, of Ghent, having employed ten years of intense study in order to simplify arithmetical calculations, has succeeded in decomposing, producing, and reducing, in one minute, by means of twelve figures, operations which required many hours and whole columns of figures and fractions. His method is applicable to money of all kinds. It is a trait highly honourable to the Swedish character, that charity boxes, frequently placed in the most exposed situation on the road side, are as safe from being feloniously opened, as if under the strongest guards. Nor, indeed, is any other unguarded property, public or private, liable to depredation from the hand of the harmless rustic. A Paris paper says, "The Americans and English educate their children in the fear of God, and the love of Money:' Ministerial Answer to Bonaparte's Physician. You say, that where he is you greatly fear In sooth, good Doctor, you are wondrous clever D'ye think we sent him there to last for ever? Aneodote.-Dean Swift happening to be in company with a petulant and conceited young man, who prided himself in saying pert things, and had often felt the retort courteous; at length got up, and with affectation, said, "Well you must know, Mr. Dean, that I set up for a wit." "Do you then," replied the other, "take my advice and sit you down again." Mammoth Girl.-A Catskill paper mentions that Lydia Monroe, who is now living in the town of Windham, Green county, weighs two hundred and thirty-two pounds. She is very healthy and active, and possessed of uncommon strength for a female. On the 25th of April last, the chief judge of the Supreme court of the state of Ohio was fined one dollar and fifty cents, for not attending a militia-muster, as a private soldier, in strict conformity to the laws of the state of Ohio. Slave Trade.-We perceive in the papers, with great regret, an account of the progress in this abominable traffic at the island of Madagascar, by French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and American vessels. They elude the English cruizers by using fast-sailing schooners; one of which, a vessel of only forty tons, called the Franklin, was intended to carry slaves across the Atlantic. Birmingham, in England, is supposed to have 19,000 houses and 110,000 inhabitants. There are also 1500 houses uninhabited. The outcast poor were 20,000, besides hundreds in poor houses. A Danish paper says the king of Hayti was formerly the slave of a widow at St. Thomas's, to whom, for her kind treatment of him, he is very grateful. He has invited her to Hayti. The Intelligencer mentions, as being in or near Washington, a lad of eighteen, who is six feet seven inches in height! A political work, from the pen of judge Chipman, of Vermont, entitled "The Federal Compact," &c. is in the press. Benjamin West, Esq. president of the Royal Academy in England, has been elected a member of the Academy of Painting, in Rome. Mr. Samuel Clegg, engineer to the Gas Light Company, in London, has made two most brilliant improvements in gas lights. They consist of a flat circular retort, divided into compartments, and a gas-governor, so called. The latter is intended to alleviate the unequal pressure of the gasometer, a desideratum that has so long been ardently wished for. By his improved retorts, sixty-two and a half per cent is saved in fuel; where it took eight hours to disengage a given quantity of gas in the old cylindrical retorts, the process is now finished in two hours; and by his improvement, from one chaldron he obtains 18,000 cubic feet, where, in the old way, he could obtain no more than 10,000. A company is forming in Philadelphia, to be called-"The Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Transporting Company"—the object of which is to facilitate the trading intercourse between these cities, and the country between them, by reducing the expenses of the transportation of goods to the western country. It is proposed to change horses and drivers once in ten miles, and to travel day and night, at least at the rate of two miles an hour, in all weather. In this way the journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh can be performed in thirteen or fourteen days. The expense of freight VOL. IV. Y five cents per pound from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and two cents back. By this arrangement even tobacco and hemp from Kentucky, and cotton from Tennessee, may be transported to Philadelphia as cheaply as to New Orleans, including the risks of water-carriage down the Mississippi. The people of Savannah, taking into consideration the evils arising from the rice-lands contiguous to it, have determined in favour of giving to the proprietors of those lands at the rate of forty cents per acre (in all seventy thousand dollars) as an inducement to abandon the wet cultivation of rice, and adopt the dry mode. This change, by draining the marshy lands, will add much to the health of the city. Statistics of Italy.-The following table exhibits the present division of Italy, according to the last treaties of Vienna and Paris, and the maps published in May, last year, at Rome, by that celebrated German geographer, William Mayer: Kingdom of Lombardy, Venetian, Square Miles.* Inhabitants. 13,880 Do. of Massa, Do. of Modena, 4,065,000 6,766,000 6,019 1,264,000 Sardinian Possessions (Etat Sarde) Kingdom of Naples and Sicily (les Deux Siciles), 31,731 Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Island of Corsica, Islands of Malta, Grozo, and Canino, (Memorial, No. 259.) La Lande, in 1807, estimated the population of Italy at 18,000,000; Pinkerton reduces it to 13,000,000; Guthrie thinks it exceeds 20,000,000. Two of many of our states will be found nearly equal in territorial extent to the whole of Italy-New-York and Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, &c. From the Dublin Freeman's Journal. Steam Boilers.-The common safety-valve applied to the boilers of engines, consisting of a plug pressed down by a lever, though useful, is not infallible, and is always secure or dangerous at the will of the attendant, who, by overloading it, renders it the strongest, instead of the weakest part of the boiler. I have long used high-pressure boilers, to which, when proved up to a certain point, I attached an inverted syphon of proper dimensions, containing such a column of quicksilver as is required to confine the steam within certain limits, but which suffers it to blow off when it attains such power as might endanger the boiler. I am aware that high-pressure engines are perilous-condensing engines are so sometimes-the mercurial valve ensures the safety of both. It should be put out of the attendant's reach. A British reviewer, in reviewing Sketches of the life of lord Barrington, relates, in substance, the following circumstance relating to the separation of this country from the British empire-a circumstance which, we believe, has been but recently divulged. The ratio of the Italian mile to the American is 37 to 100. |