NOTE

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The learned writer of the preceding Memoir has, probably through delicacy, made two omissions which the Committee deem it their duty to supply.

In page eleven of the Memoir, a reference is made to a Report, submitted as early as the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four, to the Colonial Governor, by the then Surveyor General of the Province of New York. In the next page, the author of the Report to Governor Burnet, is designated as the Historian of the Five Indian Nations. And in page twenty-eight he is again referred to as the Surveyor General of the Province, &c. His name, however is no where mentioned in the Memoir.

The Report alluded to is a most able document. It is entitled "A Memorial concerning the Fur-trade of the Province of New York, presented to his Excellency William Burnet, Esq. Captain General and Governor, &c. by CADWALLADER COLDEN, Surveyor General of the said Province, the tenth of November, seventeen hundred and twenty-four."

In this Report the author not only describes the water-courses and portages between this and Canada, and those between us and the great western Lakes, with wonderful accuracy, but presents, in the clearest manner, the immense facilities which these water communications are susceptible of affording to our internal trade. He also carries his views beyond the Lakes to the Mississippi, and after stating that "many of the branches of that river come so near to the branches of the rivers which empty themselves into the great Lakes, that in several places there is but a short land carriage from the one to the other;" he concludes with the following emphatic observation: - "If one considers the length of this river (the Mississippi), and its numerous branches, he must say, that by means of this river and the Lakes, there is opened to his view such a scene of inland navigation as cannot be paralleled in any other part of the world."

The report will be found at length in his History of the Five Indian Nations, printed in London, in seventeen hundred and forty-seven. A map is attached to the work, shewing the Lakes, the proximity of many of the important water-streams to them, and the portages or carrying places.

Mr. Colden was the Lieutenant Governor of the Province of New York for many years, and the administration of the Government repeatedly devolved upon him, by the death or absence of several Governors in Chief. He was a man of great ability and probity, and maintained a literary and philosophical correspondence with Linnæus, Dr. Franklin, Gronovius, Dr. Pottersfield, Dr. Whittle of Edinburgh, Mr. Peter Collison, F.R.S. of London, and other distinguished men of the age. His life will be found in Dr. Rees' Cyclopœdia, Phil. Ed. Vol. IX.

The writer of the Memoir, who is the grandson of Governor Colden, has, perhaps, with propriety, omitted to introduce his own name. The work, however, which he has prepared at the request of the Committee of the Corporation, shews his high estimate of the Canal policy.

It is, nevertheless, due to him to state, that he was one of a Committee who, in eighteen hundred and fifteen, was appointed by a Meeting of citizens, in the City of New York, to draw a Memorial to the Legislature in favor of the contemplated western and northern Canals. In eighteen hundred and eighteen Mr. Colden was elected one of the Vice Presidents of the "New York Corresponding Association for the Promotion of Internal Improvements."

In the same year, eighteen hundred and eighteen, he represented the City of New York in the Assembly of the State, and drafted the answer to the speech of Governor Clinton; a part of that answer is contained in the Memoir, pages fifty-one - fifty-three, and shows the then views of Mr. Colden on the great work, the completion of which we have lately celebrated.

In eighteen hundred and twenty-four Mr. Colden was elected a Member of the Senate, from the first Senatorial District, and in that public station, which he yet fills, he has lost no opportunity to advance the cause of internal improvements. In eighteen hundred and twenty-five he was chosen one of a joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly, and assisted to compile that invaluable collection of official documents, consisting of two octavo volumes, entitled "Laws of the State of New York in relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals, together with the Annual Reports of the Canal Commissioners, and other Documents requisite for a Complete Official History of those Works; also correct Maps, delineating the Routes of the Erie and Champlain Canals, and designating the lands through which they pass." This collection is referred to in the Memoir, pages fifty-eight and fifty-nine. The Committee conclude by remarking, that Mr. Colden, as a private citizen, and in his official station, has, throughout, shewn himself the zealous and constant friend of every measure which was calculated to open to us that vast "inland navigation" which his grandfather, more than a century ago, so ably described.

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Transcribed from the original text and html prepared by Bill Carr, last updated 5/21/99.