BINNEY'S CASE.—2 BLAND. 153

The specified and known objects of a canal give to it that which
may be called its peculiar character, and shew to what class it be-
longs. All canals of that class which are intended to facilitate the
transportation of the productions of the interior to tide for expor-
tation, and of the importation of foreign commodities by the same
route, must terminate at the port or point where alone the two
forms of transportation can conveniently meet. The Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal is intended to be one of this character; and there
fore, it must have such a termination; unless it be otherwise ex-
pressly provided by law.

This canal is described in the preamble of the Act of incorpora-
tion, and in its twentieth section, which recognizes and affirms
that given in the preamble. In these provisions we have the ob-
jects of the great work distinctly specified. They were to establish
a * connected navigation between the eastern and western
waters, so as to extend and multiply the means and facilities 164
of internal commerce, which would produce the happy results set
forth. And the route which it was to take, up the valley of the
Potomac, and thence over to the Ohio, is specified by the declara-
tion, that it is "to be fed through its course, on the east side of
the mountain, by the River Potomac, and the streams which may
empty therein; and on the western side of the mountain, and pass-
ing over the same, by all such streams of water as may be benefi-
cially drawn thereto by feeders, dams, or any other practicable
mode." The terminations are described by a reference to the
great object expressed, of "a connected navigation between the
eastern and western waters." Our eastern tide waters navi-
gated by ships and marine vessels to the ports, or highest
point of convenient tide navigation; and our western waters
are navigated to great advantage, and chiefly by steamboats.
These two forms of navigation, it is proposed to connect to-
gether by one unbroken line of canal; and the terminations of
this new artificial connecting line of navigation are specified
accordingly, with a distinct reference to the pre-existing modes
of navigation. "A navigable canal from the tide water of the
Biver Potomac in the District of Columbia, passing along the
route indicated, to the highest steamboat navigation of the Ohio
Biver, or of some one tributary stream thereof." 1824, ch. 79.

Here we find the western termination specified by designating
the kind of vessel which the canal boat must be enabled to meet
there; she must have it in her power to lay alongside of a steam-
boat in the waters of the west; and thus the connexion with those
waters was to be formed. Hence it is manifest, that the connex-
ion with the eastern waters was to be formed in like manner; that
is, that the canal boat should be enabled to meet a ship, by which
kind of vessels alone the tide waters of the east are navigated.