TABLE No. XII.-Showing the connections of railroads on either side the strait.

Buffalo, Quebec,
Portland, Me.
Buffalo.
14 Buffalo.

Time.

April 16, 1871, to December 15, 1871.
December 16, 1871, to April 15, 1872.
April 16, 1872, to December 15, 1872.
December 16, 1872, to April 15, 1873.

Totals

Name.

TABLE NO. XIV.-Showing the dimensions, &c., of the ferry-boats belonging to the Great Western Railway Company, taken from Document No. 9, furnished by that company.

Union, (paddle).

163

Great Western, (iron paddle).

Transit, (propeller-2 wheels).

39 10

Ft.

Depth of hold.

Gross.

Registered.

Saginaw, small steamer. Dimensions not given.

It is said that the Grand Trunk ferry-boat International carries 21 cars. The dimensions of the Canada Southern steamer have not been furnished.

TABLE NO. XV.-Showing work and time of ferry-boats Great Western and Transit, taken from record 102, furnished by Great Western Railway Company.

TABLE NO. XV.-Showing work and time of ferry-boats Great Western and Transit, taken from record 102, &c.-Continued.

TABLE NO. XVI.-Showing the number of trips made by Great Western ferry-boat from dock to dock during the month of January, 1873, in 10, 20, 30, &c., minutes, compiled from log of steamer Great Western-the month of January, 1873, being said to be the worst on record.

It will also be seen by the following extract from the annual report of June, 1873, by the president of the Michigan Central Railroad, that, in his opinion, the means of ferriage supplied by the Great Western Railway have been entirely inadequate to the business:

It (the Great Western) undertakes to do the ferry business at Detroit, but the means have been wholly inadequate. Even before the winter set in, during several months the cars could not be taken across as rapidly as was requisite, and for that period, all the time, large numbers of loaded cars, often as many as from seven hundred to one thousand, were waiting in our yards to be moved across. When winter came on-and it was the most severe by far ever known at Detroit-the difficulty was still greater; though, could the freight have crossed, it could not have been got over that road.

Although the last-named difficulty may be so far corrected as to relieve the railroad companies from embarrassment, yet the gross earnings of eight miles of railroad are expended in crossing during the summer season, and those of more than twelve in a winter of unusual severity. Moreover, the delay to passenger traffic is an important consideration; hence an association, representing $100,000,000 capital, did not regard $2,650,000 too great an outlay to secure, by means of a tunnel, with double track, an uninterrupted passage-way of a most permaneut nature, capable of fulfilling the demands of an unlimited increase

of traffic, and neither subject to delay from the condition of the river nor from encountering the constant stream of navigation which has been described.

The accompanying papers of Mr. Chesborough, the engineer, and of Mr. McBean, the superintendent of the Detroit-River tunnel, will serve to give a correct idea of its history; and while the former explains the object of the plan he adopted, the latter dwells with bitterness upon the abandonment of the enterprise.

This tunnel, commenced in the winter of 1872, was to pass under the Detroit River, from Windsor to Detroit.

Its plans and sections, furnished by the Michigan Central Railroad, show the limestone bed-rock, at 110 feet below the river level, with the following formations immediately above: 1st, hard-pan, with bowlders, 10 feet in thickness on the Canada side and 22 feet on the American; 2d, forty feet of hard blue-clay, perfectly clear, on the American side, but with a vein of sand on the other, varying in thickness from a few inches to two feet, and lying one or two feet above the hard-pan; 3d, ten feet of laminated clay; and, 4th, the soft blue-clay of the riverbottom.

The work was begun by sinking two shafts, 3,275 feet apart, at Detroit and Windsor, respectively, and a small drift of 5 feet in the clear was started to explore the ground and to form a drain for the main work when completed. It appears from Mr. Chesborough's statement that the American drainage-tunnel, of 1,220 feet, was completed without embar rassment, but not without difficulty or delay, for its course lay not in the blue-clay, as they had supposed, but in the hard-pan, which had not been reached by their economical boring-apparatus. On the Canada side they were delayed from the same cause, and the veins of sand, above mentioned, occupied so much of their attention, that the railroad companies began to get impatient.

At the annual meeting of the stockholders of the Great Western Railway, at London, Ontario, April 7, 1873, the chairman says: "We now believe that, by making the proper application we shall be able to get the bridge over that river by a smaller expense than the tunnel, and get it more expeditiously done." And Mr. Chesborough says, after it had been abandoned: "While the construction of the Detroit tunnel, as a simple engineering problem, cannot seem otherwise than practicable to members of the profession, the advisability of constructing it, as a judicious expenditure of money, is more doubtful." The growing hope that a bridge would be permitted was doubtless one mo tive for abandoning the tunnel.

At Stony Island the Canada Southern Railway crosses the river, where the total width of water-way on the line of the railway is 6,640 feet. Of that distance, by bridging, embankment, and piers, the railway has already taken possession, entirely without authority of the United States, of 3,280 feet, and, doubtless, in the future hopes to take possession of the remaining gap.

The line of this road, as prolonged, crosses the river at a short distance above one of the narrowest and worst places for heavy vessels in the river, known as "the Lime kilns," where, during the past season, a large amount of damage has been done to navigation by heavily-laden vessels touching the rocky bottom. The current is curved, swifter than at Detroit, its velocity having been increased by the obstructions already placed in the river by the railway company, so that now it is five miles an hour at the railway company's pier on Stony Island, and about two and a half miles an hour in the main channel.

All objections arising from injury to navigation by a bridge at Detroit apply with still stronger force to a bridge at this place.

The general features of this section of the river may be gathered from the Table I and the accompanying remarks, and should any danger arise to the present ferriage system from the unfortunate location of their piers or the ponderous machinery of their ferry-boats, such difficulties could easily be obviated before the traffic of the road might require another mode of passage. The shallow water, while favoring the method of open coffer-dams in the construction of a tunnel at this place, would reduce its length much below that of the Detroit tunnel if it received the same gradients for its approaches.

The different railway crossings of the river have now been considered. Two bridges only are at present desired, namely, at Detroit and at Stony Island. As the road crossing at the latter point has but just been opened, we have no data for the amount of freight it will take over. From Messrs. Bissell and Hackett's statement, the amount of freight which would pass through a bridge at Detroit is about 9,000,000 of tons per annum, while from the Great Western Railway Company's statement the whole amount of freight crossed at Detroit in 1872 was less than one-tenth that amount. But what makes a bridge necessary to the railroads is the winter ice, as during the summer freight can be crossed about as cheaply by ferry as by a bridge, when interest on the cost of the latter and maintenance are considered.

Hence, supposing one-third of the railway freight to be crossed during the winter months, it will be seen, in case of a bridge, that 9,000,000 of tons of freight is asked to yield its interests for the benefit of one-thirtieth of that amount. This ratio will become larger when the Canada Southern Road is in full operation, but it must always be small.

But, aside from the relative amounts of freight whose interests are in opposition, there is a wide difference between the rates of transportation between points connected both by water and by rail.

From Chicago to Buffalo, during the season of navigation, there is the freest competition. The vessels engaged in freighting are of the most varied kind, their owners and managers are widely scattered, and almost as numerous as the vessels; and, when the rates of freight become high enough to make carrying a little more profitable, any man with a few thousand dollars can build a vessel and compete with the others.

A combination of any serious extent and long continuation becomes then impossible.

Among the railroad lines between Chicago and Buffalo, which are few in number, combinations to fix the rates of freight are easily formed. If the rates are too high, the fact that, to enter into competition with these, a capital of many millions of dollars is required, practically destroys such competition as would fix and keep the rates at the lowest practicable point.

The results of unlimited competition and water-transportation on one hand, and of no competition and rail-transportation on the other, are shown in the rates on grain from Chicago to Buffalo by water, in 1872, which varied, according to Messrs. Bissell and Hackett's statement, from 1.66 mills per ton per mile to 3.53 mills per ton per mile; aver aging 2.74 mills, or about 12 cents per hundred pounds from Chicago to Buffalo, while the rail-rates by Blue Line were in October, 1872, 35 cents, and in May and September, 1873, 30 cents. In 1871 these rates varied from 22 cents in summer to 35 cents in winter.