Historic Highways of America (Vol. 14)

a plain and comprehensive Report of their proceedings;" their duty was to find a route for the projected canal, estimate the e

at between the Seneca River and Rome on the Mohawk; the Eastern Section extended from Rome to Albany on the Hudson. The only point at which there was serious question as to the best route of the canal was between Lake Erie and the Genesee country; and the question was whether to p

were to be ninety feet long, twelve feet in width in the clear. These would accommodate any lumber that was then being shipped from the regions tapped by the canal. The route of the canal survey was being marked by "bench marks, level pegs, and other fixtures; ... Shafts have been sunk into the earth in various places, to ascertain its nature, with a view to a just estimation of the

for large

file of the

ons intérieures ... des états-Unis d'

om a point twelve miles up the Tonawanda to the Seneca River. The distance was one hundred and thirty-six miles; the rise of one hundred and ninety-four feet from Seneca River to Lake Erie was to be overcome by twenty-five locks; the total expense was put at $1,550,985. The Middle Section extended from Seneca River to Rome, with a decline of forty-eight and one-half feet in seventy-seven miles. It was surveyed and laid out by Benjamin Wright; the estimate included $1,500 per mile for grubbing, so heavy were the forests, and reached a total of $853,186, which was

dges Yates and Platt. Acting Governor Tayler was openly opposed to the whole scheme. The Chief Justice was also opposed to this bill. Chancellor Kent was in favor of the canal, but feared it was too early for the State to undertake this gigantic work. Judges Yates and Platt were in favor of the bill; but it was likely to be lost by the casting vote of the acting Governor. Vice President Tompkins (recently the Governor) entered the ro

so, sir?' said

never forgive us for our victories, and, my word for it

sing from his seat, with

I am in favor of the canal

e the bill bec

s level rather than Rome. This decision was enforced by the fact that Mohawk navigation above Utica was always more uncertain than at any point below it; if the canal for instance should terminate at the Mohawk because of lack of means, or other cause, it would be advantageous to have its terminus on the Mohawk at a point where navigation was as uniformly reliable as possible

he canal. Those who laughed at the stakes grew sober when men came on over the route boring with four inch augers into the ground every few rods to a depth of twelve feet; by this means the nature of the soil was tested all along the route and estimates could be made of the cost of the digging; thereupon profiles could be drawn by the engineers. Each of the three great sections of the canal was subdivided into very small sections which were to be let to contractors; each working section was bounded, when possible, by a brook or ravine, in order that each contractor might have the advantage of independent drainage. The plan of the state's furnishing the tools for the work of digging the canal was soon changed, the contractors being expected to furnish their own tools. An instance of the skill of the old Erie Canal engineers, in a day when "surveying" was as loose a word as the dictionary contained, is interesting: "While Benjamin Wright, Esquire, was re-examining and laying off sections from Rome, west along the canal line, it was deemed expedient, as a te

ned June 27, 1817. Work was not begun until a formal

New York, Touching t

he spade into the hands of the Commissioners. After a short but graphic speech by the Commissioner Young, he handed the spade to Judge Richardson, the first contractor, who then thrust it into the ground and made the first excavation for the construction of the canal. The example was immediately fo

cked the long task were native born; the foreign element which played so large a part in making the Cumberland Road did not figure in the building of the Erie Canal. Angry gangs of mutinous foreign laborers did not menace the first travelers on the Erie Canal. The commissioners had the good sense to mark out the work to be done in such a way that worthy men of little capital could secure contracts; accordingly the distances to be contracted for were divided up and men of small or no means at all wer

mmissioners and engineers. Contracts innumerable were to be made and signed, calling for the provision of a hundred necessities: principally for stone, lumber, and lime; the proper quantities were to be deposited at the proper places-here in a heavy forest, there beside a swamp, and yonder at the foot of a hill. The country was quite innocent of anything that approached such a road as was needed everywhere along the line of work. It is difficult even to hint at the multitude of perplexing questions that the builders of the Erie Canal faced and somehow solved. The year had proved the advisability of disc

for the summer's campaign to the points of work on sleds during the winter. The Genesee Road between Utica and Syracuse, the most important of all, was useless for heavy loads in the summer season. During this season the entire Middle

Alleghenies and was now in calling distance of Wheeling on the Ohio; yet this road was built largely on the route of older thoroughfares, and much of its new bed ran through open lands which pioneer fires had partially cleared. Moreover it was built on the surface of the ground. The Erie Canal forged straight on where no foot but the silent hunter's had stepped; its course was marked in forests so dark that the surveyor's stakes could hardly be distinguished in the gloom-where n

the ground, at a distance of perhaps one hundred feet from the foot of the tree, around the trunk of which fifty or sixty feet up, one end of the cable is secured, the other being connected with the roller. When this is done, the man turns the crank, which successively moves the screw, the wheel and the roller, on which, as the cable winds up, the tree must gradually yield, until, at length, it is precipitated by the weight of its top. The force which may be exerted in this way, upon a tree, is irresistible, as with the principle of the wheel and the screw, by the application of the cable at a point so far from the ground, it unites also that of the lever." The machine for hauling stumps is thus described: "Two strong wheels, sixteen feet in diameter, are made and connected together by a round axle-tree, twenty inches thick and thirty feet long; between these wheels, and with its spokes inseparably framed into their axle-tree, another wheel is placed, fourteen feet in diameter, round the rim of which a rope is several t

of the usual construction. The front edge of the iron, where the cutting is to be done, is covered with steel, well sharpened and shaped like the front of a coulter, except that it retreats more as it rises to the beam. The lower edge is made smooth and gradually thickens as it extends back towards the handle, to abou

rated by seven men and two horses, could grub from thirty to forty large stumps a day. Of the eighty-nine miles cleared, forty-eight miles of the line was dug, eight miles being completed and accepted. One ten-mile stretch was half done an

ade of solid masonry instead of wood as stipulated in the estimate. Lack of snow during the winter of 1818-19 had prevented the hauling of much of the needed material. Sickness among the army of workmen had produced costly delays; pioneer conditions prevailed-the fever and ague of those who first invaded the sluggish morasses of the interior of a new continent. Special trouble had been experienced where the canal line approached the low-lying valley of the slu

Navigation Company had to be satisfied. This company had been carrying on its business and declaring greater dividends each year up to 1818. In that year the Erie Canal works at Wood Creek interrupted the operation of their system and the state was compelled to satisfy the claim. There had been, ever since 1812, a correspondence between the canal commissioners and the Western Company looking toward a purchase of the latter's rights. The price asked in 1812, and again in 1817, was $190,000. The matter was at last settled in 1820 by the payment of $152,718.52.[38] There was a moment just here when the canal ca

th, the distance from Genesee Street in Utica to the lock into the Seneca River being a little more than ninety-six miles. Navigation began in May. Contracts were let for the Eastern Section that would insure the completion of the thirty miles from Utica to Minden within the year. The course of the canal through the Mohawk Valley was resurveyed, the experienced engineer Canvass White pushing it forward to Cohoes Falls. The great rock wall at Lit

Falls, New York, Showing

n in the year previous, the tolls received amounting to $23,001.63. Contracts were let for the entire completion of the Eastern Section, and boats were already running from Utica to Little Falls. A large fraction of

eastern part of the Western Section-at Lyons, Palmyra, and Rochester. By the middle of November water had been admitted into the Eastern Section and boats were afloat from Little Falls to Schenectady. Water was admitted into the stretch of canal between Brockport and Rochester, October 10, 1823. The forty-five miles from

promised that the work there would be completed by May, 1825. The tolls this year between Mantz and Utica amounted to $77,593.26, and the tolls on the Eastern Section totaled up to $27,444.09. Water was admitted into the canal between Schenectady and Albany in October; the work here, which included twenty-nine locks, had been found unexpectedly difficult. On October 8, 1823, the first boats passed from the West and the Nort

] Its unique details, the non-participation of many, the violent rejoicings of others, the carrying out of symbolic ceremonies not unlike Roma

spondence with the chief cities and towns along the line concerning the proper celebration of the event. Two ald

ead and the vast throng moved to the head of the Erie Canal where the canal-boat "Seneca Chief" lay at anchor. Governor Clinton, the lieutenant-governor, and the committees were received on board, and Jesse Hawley, who, nearly a generation bef

e articles of freight to be carried by this boat, which should first pass from Buffalo to New York over the Erie canal, were two kegs filled with Lake Erie water. In addition to the governor of the state and his staff, the Buffalo committee embarked on the "Seneca Chief," comprising Hon. Judge Wilkinson, Captain Joy, Colonel Potter, Major Burt, Colonel Dox, and Doctor Stagg. The flotil

he announcement was taken up by each gun in a long line from Buffalo

ron at Black Rock and "fell in behind." At Lockport guns captured by Perry at the battle of Lake Erie were fired in salute to the guests and the occasion; a gunner who, it was said, had fought under Napoleon, discharged them. At Holley an address was given on the twenty-seventh. At Bro

he "Young Lion's" sentinel

he West, on the water

been diverted so far fr

el of the Gra

by whom, was a work of su

nterprise of the patriotic Peo

e Hawley, presided at a banquet which followed at one of the hotels. Grand illuminations and a ball concluded the day's entertainment. The Rochester committee consi

and "Internal Improvements" on the reverse. Another arch at Montezuma, which was reached late that evening, was a transparen

lluminated. A twenty-four pounder was discharged, resulting in the death of only two. Syracuse was reached on the th

had long befriended the canal movement. Little Falls was reached Monday evening; here, too, a change of route displeased some; the old Lock Company canal was on the north side of the Mohawk, and the Erie Canal was on the south side; a banquet was served the guests at one of the hotels. At three o'clock Tuesday afternoon, Schenectady was reached-two hours ahead of scheduled time. Here a grave reception awaited the enthusiastic voyageurs; a local paper had mentioned "a project of a funeral procession, or some other demonstration of mourning." No preparation for the reception of the visitors had been made. The canal would, it was believed, be the ruin of Schenectady; as the terminus of the old overland portage of sixteen miles from Albany, the town had grown in size and wealth; a large part of all the freight from the south that passed up the Mohawk came by wagon to Schenectady and was there loaded on boats. The villag

ton" leading the way. Unfortunately "Noah's Ark" with its bears and Indians had not kept up with the main procession and did not arrive in time to start for New York. The stea

t Lakes was to be held. "... Never before," wrote an enraptured beholder, "was there such a fleet collected, and so superbly decorated; and it is very possible that a display so grand, so beautiful, and we may even add, sublime, will never again be witnessed. We know of nothing with which it can be compared.... The orb of day darted his genial rays upon the bosom of the waters, where they played as tranquilly as upon the natural mirror of a secluded lake. Indeed the elements seemed to repose, as if to gaze upon each other, and participate in the beauty and grandeur of the sublime spectacle."[40] At the auspicious moment the Governor of New York permitted the water from Lake Erie to fall into the ocean, saying: "Thi

thence to Broadway and the City Hall. At night the illuminations were beautiful, the commonest being the letter "C" and "Grand Canal;" the New York Coffee House, the City Hotel, Peale's Museum, Scudder's Museum, Chatham and Park theaters had elaborate displays. The illuminations of the City Hall were "surpassingly beautiful." The exhibition of fireworks in New York was said to be the greatest in its history. On Monday evening, November 7, the celebration was concluded by a grand ball at the Lafayette Amphitheatre in Laurens Street; in order to secure the necessary space required, the floor of the amphitheater was connected with the floors of an adjacent circus bui

g with them a keg of Atlantic water, ornamented with the arms of the city of New York and the followin

tic were poured into the lake, Judge Wilkinson delivering an appropriate address. In the evening a concluding celebration was held at the Eagle Tavern. The waters of the ocean and the Great Lakes were at last united; how larg