I was amused, the first time, at hearing some gentlemen plan how the bed of the shoaly Mohawk might be deepened, so as to admit the passage of steam-boats. It would be nearly as easy to dig a river at once for the purpose, and pump it full; in other words, to make another canal, twice as wonderful as the present. The rail-road is a better scheme by far. In winter the traffic is continued by sleighs on the canal ice: and a pretty sight it must be.
The aspect of the valley was really beautiful last June. It must have made the Mohawk Indians heart-sore to part with it in its former quiet state; but now there is more beauty, as well as more life. There are farms, in every stage of advancement, with all the stir of life about them; and the still, green graveyard belonging to each, showing its white palings and tombstones on the hill-side, near at hand. Sometimes a small space in the orchard is railed in for this purpose. In a shallow reach of the river there was a line of cows wading through, to bury themselves in the luxuriant pasture of the islands in the midst of the Mohawk. In a deeper part, the chain ferry-boat slowly conveyed its passengers across. The soil of the valley is remarkably rich, and the trees and verdure unusually fine. The hanging oak-woods on the ridge were beautiful; and the knolls, tilled or untilled; and the little waterfalls trickling or leaping down, to join the rushing river. Little knots of houses were clustered about the locks and bridges of the canal; and here and there a village, with its white church conspicuous, spread away into the middle of the narrow valley. The green and white canal boats might be seen stealing along under the opposite ridge, or issuing from behind a clump of elms or birches, or gliding along a graceful aqueduct, with the diminished figures of the walking passengers seen moving along the bank. On the other hand, the rail-road skirted the base of the ridge, and the shanties of the Irish labourers, roofed with turf, and the smoke issuing from a barrel at one corner, were so grouped as to look picturesque, however little comfortable. In some of the narrowest passes of the valley, the high road, the rail-road, the canal, and the river, are all brought close together, and look as if they were trying which could escape first into a larger space. The scene at Little Falls is magnificent, viewed from the road, in the light of a summers' morning. The carrying the canal and rail-road through this pass was a grand idea; and the solidity and beauty of the works are worthy of it.
The canal was commenced in 1817; and the first boat from the inland lakes arrived at New York on the 4th of November 1825. The first year's revenue amounted to 566,221 dollars. In 1836, the tolls amounted to 1,294,649 dollars.
The incorporated rail-road companies in the State of New York in 1836 were fifty; their capitals varying from fifteen thousand to ten million dollars.
When I first crossed the Alleghanies, in November 1834, I caught a glimpse of the stupendous Portage rail-road, running between the two canals which reach the opposite bases of the mountains. The stage in which I travelled was on one side of a deep ravine, bristling with pines; while on the other side was the lofty embankment, such a wall as I had never imagined could be built, on the summit of which ran the rail-road, its line traceable for some miles, with frequent stations and trains of baggage-cars. One track of this road had not long been opened; and the work was a splendid novelty. I had afterwards the pleasure of travelling on it, from end to end.
This road is upwards of thirty-six miles in length, and at one point reaches an elevation of 2,491 feet above the sea. It consists of eleven levels, and ten inclined planes. About three hundred feet of the road, at the head and foot of each plane, is made exactly level. The embankments were made twenty-five feet wide at the top, and the bed of the road in excavations is twenty-five feet, with wide side ditches. Much care in drainage was necessary, as the road passes chiefly along the steep slopes of hills, of clayey soil, and over innumerable small streams. Sixty-eight culverts of masonry pass under the road, and eighty-five drains. There are four viaducts of hammer-dressed sandstone, to carry the line over streams. The most splendid of these is over the Conemaugh, eight miles from Johnstown. It has a semi-circular arch of eighty feet span; the top of whose masonry is seventy feet above the water. There is a tunnel through a spur of the Alleghany, nine hundred and one feet long, by twenty feet wide, and nineteen high. The foundations of this road are partly stone and partly wood. Each station has two steam-engines; one being used at a time, and the other provided to prevent delay, in case of accident. Four cars, each loaded with 7000 lbs. can be drawn up, and four such let down at a time; and from six to ten such trips can be accomplished in an hour. A safety-car is attached to the train, both in ascending and descending; and though not an absolute safeguard, it much increases the security. This little machine, when pressed upon from behind, grounds its point, and materially checks the velocity of the otherwise flying train. The iron rails, and some other of the metal portions of the work, were imported from Great Britain.
The cost of constructing this rail-road at the contract prices was 1,634,357 dollars; but this does not include office expenses, or engineering, or accidental extra allowances to contractors. During the first year of the two tracks being opened, fifty thousand tons of freight, and twenty thousand passengers, passed over the road.
Five years before, this line of passage was an untrodden wilderness. The act authorising the commencement of the work passed the Pennsylvania legislature on the 21st of March, 1831. On the 12th of the next month, the tents of the first working party were pitched at the head of the mountain-branch of the Conemaugh. The party consisted of two engineers, a surveyor, twelve assistants and axemen, and a cook. A track, one hundred and twenty feet wide, overgrown with heavy spruce and hemlock timber, had to be cleared, for a distance of thirty miles. The amount of labour was increased as the work proceeded; and, at one time, as many as two thousand men were employed upon the road. On the 26th of November, 1833, the first car traversed the whole length on the single track that was finished. The canals were then closed for the season; but, during the next March the road was opened for a public highway. In another year the enterprise was completed; and in May 1835, the State furnished the whole motive power. The stupendous work was then in full operation.
Our party (of four, one a child) traversed the entire State from Pittsburg to Philadelphia by canal and rail-road, in four days, at an expense of only forty-two dollars, not including provisions. There was then great competition between the lines of canal-boats. We went by the new line, whose boats were extraordinarily clean, and the table really luxurious. An omnibus, sent from the canal, conveyed us from our hotel at Pittsburg to the boat, at nine in the evening; and we immediately set off. Berths were put up for the ladies of the party in the ladies' dressing-room, and removed during the day. We were called early, and breakfast dispatched before the heat grew oppressive; but, though it was now the middle of July, I could not remain in the shade of the cabin: the scenery, during our whole course, was so beautiful. Umbrella and fan made the heat endurable on deck, except for the two hours nearest to noon. The only great inconvenience was the having to remember perpetually to avoid the low bridges, which we passed, on an average, every quarter of an hour. When we were all together, this was little of an annoyance; for one or another was sure to remember to give warning; but a solitary person, reading or in reverie, is really in danger. We heard of two cases of young ladies, reading, who had been crushed to death: and we prohibited books upon deck. Charley thought the commotion caused on our approach to a bridge the best part of our amusement; and he was heard to complain sometimes that it was very long since we had had any bridges, or when one chanced to be so lofty that we might pass under it without stooping. The best of all in his eyes were the horizontal ones, which compelled us to lie down flat.
The valley of the Kiskiminites is like one noble, fruitful park. Here and there were harvest fields of small grain, and of the tasselled Indian corn: and a few coal and salt works, some forsaken, some busy, showed themselves on reaches of the river; but we were usually enclosed by a circle of wooded hills, reposing in the brightest lights and shadows. The canal commonly ran along the base of one of these hills; but it often let us slip into the broad lucid stream of the river itself.