CHAPTER XX

THE ERIE CANAL

Since the beginning of the century there had been more or less talk of a canal to connect the Hudson with Lake Erie, and in 1816 the legislature of New York voted to undertake the building of the Erie Canal. The adoption of this plan and its success were due mainly to De Witt Clinton, who set forth in a carefully reasoned memorial the advantages of the proposed waterway. For years thousands of men had been employed in the work, and many difficulties had been met and solved. Commissioners had been appointed to determine the route which the canal should follow and to oversee its construction. They conducted operations in three sections, intrusting the job of digging and filling to contractors, no contract covering any large amount of territory.

The eastern section extended along the line of the Iroquois trail up the Mohawk Valley from Albany to Rome. On this part of the route swift streams had to be crossed, and falls and rapids had to be passed. Where the canal crossed creeks and streams, guard locks were built to keep the water from rushing into the canal and overflowing it. At Little Falls there was such a narrow space between the mountains that rocks had to be blasted to make a bed for the canal, and a wall twenty or thirty feet high, rising from the channel of the Mohawk River, built to support it. Other falls on this section required aqueducts and elaborate series of locks.

The middle section followed the line of trail and turnpike as far as Syracuse, and then went northwards to Clyde and Montezuma. It had the greater part of the “Long Level,” a sixty-nine-mile stretch from a point east of Utica to Syracuse, without any locks. At Montezuma, near the beginning of the third section, the builders came to the edge of the Cayuga marshes, and here they erected an embankment, nearly two miles long and so high that boats were often seventy-two feet above the level of the swamps. At Rochester a great aqueduct was built at the Genesee River. Between Rochester and Buffalo the canal ran for a long distance inside the great ridge which rises south of Lake Ontario, but at Lockport it crossed the mountains. Here was performed one of the most difficult engineering feats of the whole construction. An excavation was made through the three-mile ridge at an average depth of twenty feet, and five great locks were built, each twelve feet high, so that vessels were elevated and dropped sixty feet.

The first surveyors drove along the route of the canal five lines of stakes. The two outer rows were sixty feet apart, indicating the space to be cleared. Between these were two other rows forty feet apart, which indicated the exact width of the canal, and in the middle a single line of stakes marked the centre of the waterway. It was eight years and four months since the surveyors had driven these stakes, amid the mocking laughter of the inhabitants, who thought these dreamers crazy to plant their bits of wood in swamps and forests, on rocky ledges and in watercourses. In spite of swamp fever, which had at one time laid low a thousand men, and in spite of rough tools and almost insuperable obstacles, the three hundred and sixty-three miles were at length completed. By eighty-three locks and eighteen aqueducts, covering a descent of 568 feet from Lake Erie to the Hudson, navigation was made open. Sections of the canal had been in use since 1819, and now, on October 26, 1825, Governor Clinton had started on the first trip along the entire length of the waterway which had long been familiarly known as “Clinton’s Big Ditch.”

The city of Buffalo was particularly rejoiced over this occasion because the western terminus of the canal had long been in doubt and had only very recently been settled in favor of that town over her rival, the present suburb of Black Rock. Buffalo was located on the shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Niagara River. Black Rock was three miles down the river, and had a good open harbor, in which its citizens had recently built a two-mile pier to protect vessels from the waves of the lake and river. Buffalo Creek had a troublesome sand-bar which injured its harbor, and the Black Rock settlers had built their pier in the hope of stopping the canal at their town instead of having it run on to Buffalo. When the canal commissioners came to decide on the terminus, they were of the opinion that the current of the river was too swift at Black Rock, and that the danger from ice and sunken rocks was too great. They would bring the canal to Buffalo if that harbor could be improved. When the public-spirited men of that place heard that, they agreed together that if the canal was brought to their town, they would remove the sand-bar. They clubbed together and on their own personal notes borrowed from the state twelve thousand dollars, a large sum in those days, with which they removed the sand-bar and made a safe harbor.

A new canal-boat, the _Seneca Chief_, had been built of Lake Erie cedar for the opening trip, and lay moored in the harbor at Buffalo. On her deck were two paintings, one of the scene which was soon to be enacted, Buffalo creek and harbor with the canal-boat moving away along the canal, and the other representing Governor Clinton as Hercules, dressed in Roman costume, and resting from his labors. At nine o’clock in the morning a grand procession formed in front of the court-house and marched to the head of the canal. Governor Clinton and his staff, and a group of prominent New Yorkers who had been closely connected with the furtherance of the project, went on board the _Seneca Chief_ and an address was given. Upon the boat had been placed two new kegs containing Lake Erie water, which was to be mingled at New York with that of the ocean. The _Seneca Chief_ was to be followed by four other canal-boats, and a fifth craft, which was called _Noah’s Ark_. The last contained, under the title “Products of the West,” a bear, two eagles, two fawns, several fish, and two Indian boys,--the counterparts of the “beasts, birds, and creeping things” of the Bible story.

As four magnificent gray horses pulled at the tow-rope of the _Seneca Chief_ and the vessel began to move, a signal-gun was discharged, and all along the route the cannon that had been stationed took up the sound and passed it on till the news of the opening was carried to New York in one hour and thirty minutes. New York responded, sending the message back to Buffalo in the same time.

[Illustration: Through the Locks at Lockport]

At almost every town and village along the route the _Seneca Chief_ was met with exercises, dinners, triumphal arches, and illuminations. So steadily was the party welcomed and fêted that it took them six days to make the journey to Albany. Two or three of the celebrations are of especial interest. At Lockport the boat was greeted by a salute of guns which had been captured by Perry at the battle of Lake Erie, being discharged by a gunner who was said to have fought under Napoleon. At Rochester a dramatic ceremony had been arranged. Rain was falling when the guests arrived, but this did not dampen the inhabitants’ zeal. They assembled in large numbers along the banks of the canal, headed by eight companies of uniformed soldiers. As the boat approached the great nine-arch stone aqueduct over the Genesee River, the _Young Lion of the West_, stationed there “to protect the entrance,” pushed out from the shore and a voice hailed the _Seneca Chief_.

“Who comes there?” cried the _Young Lion’s_ spokesman.

“Your brothers from the West, on the waters of the Great Lakes.”

“By what means have they been diverted so far from their natural course?”

“By the channel of the Grand Erie Canal.”

“By whose authority, and by whom, was a work of such magnitude accomplished?”

“By the authority and by the enterprise of patriotic people of the state of New York.”

At this answer the _Young Lion_ gave way, guns were fired, and amid the cheers of the great crowd the flotilla of boats, with Governor Clinton, Lieutenant-Governor Talmadge, and other distinguished men on deck, floated into the spacious basin at the end of the aqueduct. The customary procession and address of welcome were followed by a grand ball and illumination, and the flotilla, increased by the _Young Lion of the West_ with several Rochester gentlemen on board, proceeded.

At Rome, on the 30th of October, the first sign of unfriendliness was encountered. The inhabitants of that place were dissatisfied because the canal did not follow the line of the old waterway laid out by the Western Inland Locks Navigation Company, upon which the village of Rome had been built. On the day when the group of boats left Buffalo, the citizens of Rome had held a solemn mourning assembly, and had marched with muffled drums from the old canal to the new, bearing with them a barrel of water from the old which they emptied into the new. Even this mournful occasion had been closed with an appropriate celebration and feast at the hotel, but no warm welcome greeted the travellers on the thirtieth. At Schenectady rain and a spirit of marked opposition met them because it was believed that the Erie Canal would be the ruin of the town. Hitherto it had been the terminus of the Mohawk River route and of the western stage and wagon lines. The opening of a direct water route to Albany would be fatal to all these interests. Only the students of Union College broke through the general disapproval, and did the honors of the town in the pouring rain. That afternoon, November 2, the boats entered the last lock at Albany, and were greeted by a welcoming salute of twenty-four cannon, followed by appropriate ceremonies.

From Albany the canal-boats were towed down the Hudson by steamer to New York, where great celebrations had been prepared. “Never before,” writes an enthusiastic onlooker, “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.”

Governor Clinton poured the Lake Erie water into the ocean, another gentleman poured in water from several other places, and the waters of the Atlantic and the Great Lakes were pronounced “wedded,” joined in indissoluble union. A procession a mile and a half long, the greatest ever formed in America at that date, marched through the streets, a grand exhibition of fire-works was held, and a ball was given in a room made by the joining of an amphitheatre and a circus building, forming the largest ball-room ever used in America. All about the hall the great names of the canal constructors were blazoned, and in the ladies’ banquet room a boat made of maple sugar, which had been presented to Governor Clinton at Utica, floated in a vessel filled with Lake Erie water. At the end of the celebration the committee from the West departed for home, bearing a keg of Atlantic water, ornamented with the arms of the city of New York and the following words in letters of gold: “Neptune’s return to Pan. New York, 4th Nov. 1825. Water of the Atlantic.” When the committee reached Buffalo with this gift, they held the closing scene of the great pageant, mingling the waters of the Atlantic with those of Lake Erie.

If words, festivities, symbolic ceremonies, and a waterway of commerce could do it, the Great Lakes and the Atlantic were united. The importance of the outcome justified the hopes of the canal-promoters. The canal cost nearly eleven million dollars; but the last debts were discharged in 1836. Commerce increased greatly and was immensely benefited, and within twelve years plans were on foot for enlarging the canal, which were soon carried out.

Travellers soon found great pleasure in making their western journeys by canal-boat, and the canal became a thoroughfare of travel as well as of trade. That bright and interesting raconteur, Mrs. Anne Royall, went west by this route in 1827–1828, and left a vivid account of the boats and their method of locomotion. The canal she describes as having a neat railing outside the tow-path, painted white and about four feet high. Within this railing the route was fringed on both sides with beautiful crimson Canadian thistles, which flourished in the sandy gravel. Two kinds of boats passed along this waterway,--packet boats and freight boats. The packet boats, accommodating about thirty passengers, were fitted up with dining-rooms, separate quarters for ladies and gentlemen, and rooms lined with berths, as was the custom in all steamboats of that day. The fare, including board, was four cents a mile; without board, three cents. The prices were thirty-seven and a half cents for dinner, twenty-five for breakfast, and twelve and a half for lodging. Mrs. Royall made her first journey from Schenectady to Utica, a distance of eighty miles, passing through twenty-six locks, in twenty-four hours. The boat was drawn by three stout horses, who proceeded at a brisk trot and were relieved every ten miles by fresh horses and a new driver. Freight boats were drawn by two horses or even only one, and took passengers at the same rate as freight, a cent and a half a mile.

Whenever her boat met another, and this was very often, Mrs. Royall sat in dread of a collision, or at least a tangling of the ropes, but each time they slipped past each other as if by magic. After some watching she saw that the boats going west had the right of way and proceeded as usual, while the boatman of the vessel going east checked his horses till the rope fell for an instant very loose in the water, and the other boat and team could slip over it. The canal was frequently crossed by bridges, which made sitting on the upper deck dangerous; but when they approached one of these obstructions the helmsman called out in a loud voice, “Low bridge!” and the passengers promptly “ducked” their heads. When the tow-path crossed the bridge instead of going under it, the driver swung his team over so fast that the movement of the boat was barely slackened. These boats carried the mails, were widely advertised for traffic and travel, and were met at every important point by stages connecting with the neighboring towns and villages. This method of travelling was recommended by all as far preferable to the jolting, overcrowded stage-coach.

Until 1858 the Erie Canal was the all-important transportation route between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic. Even the coming of the railroad did not take away its trade, and as late as 1862 the ton-mileage of canal traffic was more than double the combined ton-mileage of the New York Central and the Erie railroads. Twenty years later canal tolls were abolished and the canal became a free waterway, maintained and operated by the state. Since the 1862 enlargement there has been no permanent improvement of any importance of the canal until the present day. With the increase of railroad traffic and the hampering effect of the conditions of forty years ago,--even the same style of boats, and horse towage,--the canal has not been able to keep pace with the railroad, and its traffic has gradually fallen off, until it is to-day only two-thirds that of 1868 and less than one-tenth the freight tonnage on either the New York Central or Erie roads.

A committee appointed in 1899 investigated the condition of the canal and advised enlargement of its bed. Their recommendations were approved by popular vote in 1903, and the enlargement is now in progress. The new canal is to be navigable by steam-towed barges drawing ten feet of water and having a carrying capacity of at least a thousand tons, which is four times that of the largest boat in use on the existing canal. The route is also to be considerably changed. River and lake channels are to be utilized in one-half the new part of the route, carrying the canal northward along the line of the Seneca River and Oneida Lake to the Mohawk, and away from Syracuse and Rochester. It is interesting to note that in making use of river and water beds the canal returns more nearly to the route of the old Indian trail. Improved methods of engineering will do away with several locks. At Waterford on the Hudson five locks will take the place of the sixteen now necessary at Cohoes; at Lockport two locks are to be substituted for five. The minimum depth of the channel is to be twelve feet, and the locks are to be at least three hundred and twenty-eight feet long. With all these changes it is estimated that the trip from Buffalo to New York will be cut down from ten days to five, and that a large amount of traffic will turn to the canal as the cheapest and most satisfactory method of transportation.