Up the Bay -- Through the Canal.

Philadelphia, July 31.

To the Editor of The American: The traveler who rounds North Point and turns northward out of the Patapsco [River] into the Chesapeake Bay will surely be attracted just now by something new along the shore line. The improvements of the new Bayside Park loom up from the Bay steamers that pass within the quarter of a mile quite majestically. The pier pavilion is in the Turkish style, and looks commodious and handsome. At the end of the pier, which seems practically completed and which extends out into the Bay 1,000 feet, a steam dredge is at work making deep water. The query naturally arises from this, whether the park is also to be a steamboat resort? There would seem to be no other reason for deepening the water approaches. The park is not a marshy ground, as many have supposed from its location. On the contrary, there is quite an elevation above the Bay level, that is distinguishable at even a quarter mile distance. There seems to be also clusters of trees close to the buildings, and the shade, therefore, will not have to be planted entirely.

This is written from one of the Ericson Line day boats, between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and we have just passed through the last lock of the famous Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and are on the Delaware River, bound for the Quaker City. He who makes the trip through the canal is always glad when the time required for sailing through the ditch is over. The canal is only 14 miles long, but it takes four hours to get through it. The entrance to the Elk and the Sassafras Rivers, the two routes most generally discussed is practicable for a ship canal across the Peninsula, are less than one half a mile apart. Both entrances are between high bluffs. The Elk [River] at the entrance and for several miles up, is one of the most beautiful rivers in the United States. Whoever has made the trip through the canal will concede that this is not over praise. It is almost as beautiful as the Hudson. There are high bluffs or rolling woodlands on either side until within a mile or two of Chesapeake City. Just before reaching Chesapeake City, however, the river narrows to about 400 feet, and the shores are low and marshy. The average depth of the Elk is about 12 feet.

The canal, which begins at Chesapeake City, is of about a 12-foot higher level than the Elk, and the lift of the lock there is one of the main sights of the trip from the waters of the Chesapeake to those of the Delaware. The passengers all crowd to the rails and watch the process of pumping the waters into the lock. To see the boat rise like a cork in a pail that is being filled from a pitcher is quite interesting. When the steamer is released and is fairly afloat in the canal the excitement soon dies down, however. Those who travel through the canal "see it." There is no mistake about this -- they see it "good and plenty." The boats just creep through it at a snail's pace. As has before been said, it takes four hours to go 14 miles. The passengers who were full of animation and interest while on the Chesapeake just wilt down, lean over the rail and look like a collection of droopy plants that are in need of a rain. Even conversation lulls to a dead calm and silence broods over the congregation. Those who are used to the broad, blue waters of the Chesapeake and the Patapsco get enough of the canal in about twenty minutes.

The peninsula rises into quite a ridge between the Elk River and the Delaware River. In the deepest cut or for a distance of about four miles before reaching "Buck's Bridge," the bluffs on either shore rise far above the pilothouse of the steamer. At Buck's Bridge, which is built across the canal from bluff to bluff, the steamer passes under, and there is about four feet to spare beneath the bridge. The canal through this cut has, I believe, a depth of about nine feet and averages about 60 feet wide. For most of the way the high banks through the ridge cut are bleak and bare of herbage or shrubbery and are washed in many places into gulches or rounded cones.

While the canal from Chesapeake City to Delaware City is 14 miles long, there was utilized a natural waterway on the Delaware River side of the ridge that greatly reduced the necessary digging. After leaving St. Georges this waterway spreads into a river several hundreds of yards across, though it is so shallow that the steamers stick close to the canal channel and go slow. Several streams of considerable size empty into the canal before it reaches St. Georges. We passed in the canal one steamboat packed to the roof with tomatoes and traveling toward Baltimore. They had undoubtedly come from the Delaware side.

REPSAC.