If we think that the men of a hundred years ago were people with few wants, who were willing to let others do the trading and make the fortunes, we are quite in the wrong. They were as eager in business as are the driving Americans of to-day. So long ago as 1683 Thomas Dongan, a well-born Irishman, came to New York to be its governor. In his letters to the government in London he said a great deal about the fur trade and the danger of its going to other cities. Once he reported that two hundred packs of beaver skins had gone down the Susquehanna river and across to Philadelphia instead of being brought by the Mohawk to New York, and he thought that if this traffic continued New York would be ruined.

As time went on the rivalry grew stronger and stronger. All the cities on the coast were bidding for the western trade. The “West” was then the Genesee country, the plains along the Lakes, and the rich lands of the Ohio valley. Some of the trade from the Lakes and the Genesee went down the St. Lawrence. Heavy articles especially were sent to Quebec, while lighter freight was taken overland down the Mohawk. When De Witt Clinton was stirring up the legislature and the people of New York, he told them he was very sorry to learn that merchandise from Montreal was sold in the state for less than New York prices. This was because there was transportation by water from Montreal, and the St. Lawrence merchants could afford to undersell those of New York.

Many people thought that the wheat and flour and other products of western New York would all go down the Susquehanna to Baltimore and Philadelphia. Rough boats known as “arks” were built and floated down the river in the high water caused by the melting of the snows in the Allegheny highlands. From two to five hundred barrels of flour were carried in one of these craft. As the boats could not be sailed up the river, they were taken to pieces at the end of the voyage and sold for lumber. We have already seen that Colonel Rochester followed this valley in migrating to the Genesee river, and one writer calls attention to the fact that in seven days several elderly people had come quite comfortably by this route from Baltimore to Bath in the southwestern part of New York. One could now travel from San Francisco to New York and almost halfway across the Atlantic ocean in that time.

Other cities also hoped to secure some of the profits of dealing with the rapidly growing West. The tourist on his way down the Potomac to Mount Vernon, the home of Washington, will pass by Alexandria, a quiet old town of about fifteen thousand people. Washington himself thought it possible that Alexandria might get a good share of the trade from Detroit and other places on the Lakes and on the Ohio river. All this seems strange to us, because since the days of our great-grandfathers the traffic has been going largely to New York. The cause of the change was the Erie canal. Yet in 1818, a few months after the canal was begun, an Albany newspaper discussed very earnestly, as one of the chief questions of the day, the danger that Philadelphia would take away the western trade.

Flour, salt, and potash had been taken to New York in large quantities, but all these products were carried as far as Schenectady in little ten-ton boats, by way of Wood creek and the Mohawk. As the business grew it was seen to be impossible always to drag the boats up Wood creek with horses, and that the small canal, ten feet wide, which had been cut around the rapids at Little Falls, could not serve the purposes of another generation.

Hence for many years there had been talk of a canal to join the Lakes and the Hudson, thus making navigation without a break from the interior of the country to the Atlantic ocean at New York. The credit for first thinking of such a canal has been claimed for several men, but probably it was “in the air,” and many thought of it at about the same time.

Gouverneur Morris, one of the famous New York statesmen of the day, proposed that lake Erie should be “tapped” and its waters led to the Hudson. The surface of this lake is five hundred and seventy-three feet above tide water at Albany. It was Morris’s idea to dig a channel, with a gently sloping bottom, which should send the water east in a stream deep enough to float a boat. The water thus turned from its course would go to Albany instead of flowing through the Niagara and the St. Lawrence. There were, however, difficulties about the plan which Morris did not understand, and it was never carried out.

The great water way is often known as “Clinton’s Ditch.” This name was doubtless given in ridicule by those who did not think it could be built. There were many who laughed at the surveyors when they saw them looking about, using their levels, and driving their stakes in the woods and swamps. It was even said that to dig such a canal was impossible, that it would cost too much money, that it would take too much time, and that the canal itself could never be made to hold water.

But Clinton and his supporters believed in it, and worked hard to make it a success. They said that the cost of carrying a ton of produce in wagons a distance of one hundred miles was about thirty-two dollars. The experience of others had proved that in canals a ton could be carried one mile for one cent, or a hundred miles for one dollar. There is a great difference between one dollar and thirty-two dollars, especially if the difference is added to the cost of the wheat from which our bread is made, or of the lumber used in building our houses. Clinton himself thought that it might take ten or fifteen years to make the canal, but, as we shall see, it was finished in less time than he supposed.

Clinton declared very truly that New York was especially fortunate, for the surface made it an easy task to dig the ditch. There was no high or rough ground to be crossed, there was plenty of water to keep the canal full, and it would run through a fertile and rich country. As Clinton was governor of New York during much of the period in which the canal was made, his name is imperishably connected with the great enterprise. He was once candidate for the office of President of the United States, but perhaps even that office, if he had been elected, would not have given him so much honor as did the building of this great public work.

Canals were not new in Clinton’s time. Long before the Christian era began men had dug them to carry water for various uses, such as irrigation and turning machinery. Often, as for hundreds of years in the fen country of England, canals have been used to drain wet or flooded lands and for moving boats. Even beavers have been known to dig ditches, which fill with water, that they may float the wood which they cut to the place where they build their dams and their homes.

If a region is perfectly level, only a ditch and water are needed. But lands are not often level for more than short distances; hence a canal consists commonly of a series of levels at different heights. Of course the boats must be passed from one level to another by some means. If they are small, they can be dragged up or down between two levels; but this method will not serve for large boats carrying many tons of coal, lumber, salt, or bricks, hence locks are generally used. A lock is a short section of a canal, long enough for the boats used, and having walls rising from the bottom of the lower level to the top of the upper one. There are big gates at each end. If a boat is to ascend, it runs into the lock on the lower level and the lower gates are closed. A small gate in the large upper gate is then opened and the water runs in from above, slowly raising the water in the lock and with it the boat. When the water in the lock is even with the water in the upper level, the big upper gates are swung open and the boat goes on its way. In a similar manner boats go down from higher to lower sections of the canal. Locks have been used in Italy and in Holland for more than four hundred years.

On April 15, 1817, the legislature passed the law for the construction of the long ditch, and the first spade was set into the earth by Judge John Richardson at Rome, New York, on July 4 of the same year. This was forty-one years after the Declaration of Independence, and it is plain that the country had grown much in wealth and numbers when a single state could start out to build a water way three hundred miles long. After the first spadeful of soil had been lifted, the citizens and the laborers eagerly seized the shovels, and thus everybody had a small share in beginning the great work. Guns were fired and there was much rejoicing.

The men who took the contracts for digging short sections of the canal were mainly farmers who had gained good properties and who were living along the line. In those days, if any one had visited the men at work, he would not have seen crowds of foreign laborers living in huts, but men born and reared in the country round about. It was little more than twenty years since the Genesee road had been built through central New York, and there was still much forest. The trees grew rank and strong, and it was no light task to cut through the tangled network of roots that lay below the surface. First the trees were cut down, making a lane sixty feet wide, and in this the canal was dug to a width of forty feet. Powerful machines that could draw out stumps and pull over the largest trees were brought from Europe. The wheels of the stump machine were sixteen feet across. A plow with a sharp blade was also made, to cut down through the heavy carpet of fibers and small roots.

Swiftly one piece after another of the canal was finished and the water let in. The trench was found to hold water, and boats were soon busy hauling produce from town to town. In 1825 it was finished from Black Rock, or Buffalo, to Waterford, above Troy. The work had taken eight years and had cost a little less than eight million dollars. De Witt Clinton was right and the croakers were wrong. Perhaps it was hard at that time to find any one who did not think that he had always wanted a canal.

There were, it is true, a few disappointed ones at Schenectady. There the wagons from Albany had always stopped, and there the boating up the Mohawk had begun. As all the loads had to be shifted between the river and the land journeys, there had been work for many men. Thus the place had grown up, and now that boats were to run through without change, some people naturally thought that the town would die out, or would at least lose much of its business. These few discontented folk, however, were hardly to be counted, among the thousands who exulted over the completed canal.

A great celebration was arranged, and the rejoicings of the beginning were redoubled in the festivities at the end. Boats were made ready at Buffalo to take Governor Clinton and the other guests to New York. When the first boat entered the canal from lake Erie a cannon was fired. Cannon had been set within hearing distance all the way to the sea along the line of the canal. This way of sending news was the nearest approach to the telegraph at that time. Soon the tidings of the great event came booming down among the cliffs of the Hudson and reached New York.1

Two kegs of lake Erie water were put on one of the boats at Buffalo, and we shall see what was done with them. There were also two barrels of fine apples which had been raised in an orchard at Niagara Falls. These were not to be eaten on the way, one barrel being for the Town Council of Troy, and the other for the city fathers of New York. Many people on both sides of the ocean are still eating fine apples from the trees of the Genesee country.

One boat in the little fleet was called Noah’s Ark, and on board were two eagles, a bear, some fawns, fishes, and birds, besides two Indian boys. These were sent to New York as “products of the West.” At every town there was a celebration, and great was the excitement in such cities as Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and Albany. There were salutes and feasts and speeches and prayers, and the gratitude and joy of the people fairly ran over. The greatest celebration of all was in New York, where everybody turned out to do honor to the occasion. The fine ladies boarded a special boat, and the “aquatic procession” went down through the bay to Sandy Hook. It was arranged that a messenger of Neptune, the sea god, should meet the fleet, inquire their errand, and lead them to his master’s realm. Here Governor Clinton turned out the lake Erie water from the two kegs into the sea as a symbol of the joining of the lakes and the ocean. Then all the people went back to the city and had speeches and parades, feasts and fireworks, while the city-hall bell was rung for several hours. The illumination was said to be a fine one, but perhaps their lamps and candles would now look dim.

After the canal was finished the carrying business was quite made over. Little was heard then about sending western New York fruit and grain to Philadelphia or Montreal or Alexandria. Freighting was so cheap that a man who had been selling his wheat for thirty cents a bushel now received a dollar for it. In the war with England, only a few years before, it had cost more to carry a cannon from Albany to Oswego than it had cost to make it. The journey had now become an easy and simple matter. Two farmers built a boat of their own, loaded it with the produce of their farms, and took it down Seneca lake and all the way to New York. They were let out of the woods into the wide world.

The canal was not entirely given up to the carrying of freight. People thought that it was a fine experience to travel in the passenger boats, which were called “packets.” These were considered as remarkable as are the limited express trains of to-day. The speed allowed by law was five miles an hour. To go faster would drive the water against the banks and injure them. The fare was five cents a mile including berth and table. It was said that a man could travel from New York to Buffalo with “the utmost comfort” and without fatigue. The journey cost eighteen dollars, and only took six days! We, of course, cannot help thinking of the Empire State Express, which leaves New York at 8.30 A.M. and arrives in Buffalo at 4.50 P.M.

If the journey of those days seems long to us, we must remember that to most of the travelers the scenery was fresh and interesting, for it was a visit to a new land. The rocky highlands, the blue Catskills, the winding Mohawk, and the towns and farms of the interior were perhaps as full of interest as the morning paper is on the trains of to-day. From Utica to Syracuse, more than fifty miles, is one great level; but on nearing Rochester the canal follows an embankment across a valley, and the passengers in those days looked wonderingly down on the tops of trees. At Lockport they heard the clatter as they slowly rose by a long row of locks to the top of the cliffs, and at Buffalo they looked out on a sea of fresh water. At Utica, Rome, Rochester, and other places, after a few years, side canals came in from north and south, from Binghamton and from the upper valley of the Genesee; and up in the hills great reservoirs were built, with shallow canals known as “feeders” leading down to the main trench. These were built to make sure that there should be water enough for dry seasons; for locks will leak, and whenever a boat locks down a lockful of water goes on toward the sea.

Now all was stir and growth. Buffalo had started on its way to become a great city. Rochester ground more wheat and Syracuse made more salt. There was no doubt that New York would soon be known as the metropolis of the western world, and “Clinton’s Ditch” became the most famous of American canals.