two-thirds of the commerce of the Union And, estimating the number of steamboats from their average tonnage, there must have been in 1842, one thousand in the United States, of which six hundred belonged to the West.
The table of tonnage above given, shows where this vast commercial marine was employed; first, in the Mississippi Basin; next, in the city of New York; and then on the Lakes. From the port of New York there were some seventy or eighty steamboats constantly running—on the Lakes there were hundreds. In the valley of the Mississippi the number of steamboats they employed was equal to the whole number of those employed in England. This will appear from the following statement from McCullough's gazetteer of the steamboat tonnage of Great Britain in 1834:
