35 man leaves home he locks the doors of his house. So a nation going to war with a naval enemy, will, at an early day, carefully lock the mouths of all those valuable harbors, inlets, sounds, and rivers, which have narrow entrances, and thus lessen the home duties of the fleet, as well as furnish a place of refuge when disabled by storms, or pressed by superior force. The mode of obstructing entrances to harbors, so as to effectually secure them, and yet allow of a passage of a friendly ship with but little hindrance, is pointed out with great clearness by the Board of Engineers in a report made to the Secretary of War in 1840. The obstruction can be created in the entrance to a harbor like that of NT ew-York in probably two or three days. The whole British navy could not force a passage through the entrance, without first removing the obstruction ; and the obstruction could be removed by an enemy only after the silencing- of the forts under the command of whose guns it is placed. Having taken steps to carefully secure the most important entrance by temporary obstructions and by heavily armed forts, let us promptly provide an interior water communication between our chief cities, parallel with our Atlantic coast, and having numerous communications with it at protected points. This has been frequently recommended by the Board of Engineers as a work of vast military importance. In April last, the Military Committee of Congress, in an able report, demonstrated how this object could be speedily and cheaply accomplished, viz. : By enlarging the locks of three short canals, of an aggregate length of only 78^ miles. A vessel entering the sound of North Carolina, from the Atlantic Ocean, can proceed by way of the Dismal Swamp Canal (22 miles lon^) to Norfolk ; then passing up the Chesapeake Bay, communicating with both Washington and Baltimore, if desirable, it can sail into the Delaware River through a canal only 13^ miles long; after communicating with the great city of Philadelphia, it could sail directly into New- York harbor, by passing through the Delaware and Raritan Canal, a distance of 43 miles, and thence proceed up the East River, 140 miles, to New London, before going to sea. Here is an inland communication between almost all of our leading ports and cities along the maritime front of the populous and powerful States of Connecticut, New-York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina a distance of nearly 1,000 miles, and having many facile and easily protected outlets to the sea. Suitable timber locks, capable of passing large war vessels, can be made ready for use, in a case of pressing emergency, in from twenty to twentyfive days. The Government has ample legal authority to make this great improvement, if a military necessity. As it is, let it be done, and in such a manner that we can easily concentrate large ships at any desirable harbor to resist any invasion, when the telegraph shall announce the disasters or separations wrought on the enemy's fleet by storms or by our returning squadrons. The engineers strongly recommend this double coast line as a remarkable military advantage possessed by neither England nor France. Our own sense tells us that if a ship or ships of war or commerce should be blockaded in a harbor, and thus prevented from going to sea, the evil would be lessened if the harbor was connected, by a safe and unexposed interior channel, with all the harbors on the coast for a thousand miles so also a blockade of one harbor could be broken up, by quietly concentrating in it a superior force drawn from the other harbors connected with it by the interior channel.
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