Alexandria Gazette & Advertiser

CIRCUITOUS VOYAGE

Mobile, (Alabama,) Jan. 30.--There is a barge now at one of the wharves, which was built at Pittsburgh, where she was loaded for Nashville, Tennessee; from thence she took another cargo for N. Orleans, where she was discharged, or partly discharged. From New Orleans she proceeded down the Mississippi with a small load, consisting of bacon, principally--came out above the Balize--and after crossing the Gulf of Mexico, (or that part lying between the mouth of this bay and the Mississippi River,) arrived "in good order & well conditioned," at this port, a few days since. She is a large boat, capable of carrying about 400 barrels, decked for a few feet at each end, and along her gunwales about one foot wide for a footway, leaving a space of about 65 by 12 feet amidships, over which a thin, slight roof is erected, "supported by stanchions or posts, about 5 feet above the deck; the sides and ends of this projection are covered with thin boards, tacked on in the manner of weather boarding."

A few years ago, intelligent men would have been as likely to believe that a canal would be cut along the Alleghany ridge, and supplied with rum and molasses from the old lady's rivers and lakes to float barges upon, as that flour & bacon should be brought to Mobile, all the way by water from the back part of Virginia, as they now frequently are. Indeed, such wonders have been worked within a few years, in the way of steam power, canals, &c. that there is some probability of our being enabled, ere long, to make passages from the Mexican Gulf, along the Atlantic coast, to New England, in steam boats, and return by way of the western states in the same vessel we start in, without being subjected to a single mile of jolting.