hour, might easily be surpassed by a schooner with a favorable wind. Fast sailing barkentines and brigantines of enlarged hold capacity were devised to meet this dangerous rivalry. Having no coal bills to pay, the sailing vessels could offer lower rates and so manage to hold their own in the bulky freight traffic. They continued to carry the major part of the coal, wood, and iron manufactures shipped from northern ports in exchange for the cotton, sugar, and hard timber of the South, but passenger traffic was rapidly transferred to the safer and more regular steamship lines. The coasting trade offered large scope for an enterprising shipmaster. The voyage from Calais, Maine, to Point Isabel, Texas, was twenty-six hundred miles, as long as that from Boston to Liverpool, but more profitable because of the many intermediate ports. The hazards of the passage round Cape Hatteras were reduced by the building of the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal (1855-1860). The voyage from Boston to Puget Sound was fifteen thousand miles, but along this route, too, stops were made at Rio Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, Callao, San Diego, San Pedro, San Francisco, and Portland, with a profitable interchange of cargo. Inland Navigation.— Commerce through the Great Lakes Marvin, was marvelously increased since the days when the open 395-402. boat of the fur trader made its perilous way from Buffalo to Detroit and Michilimackinac. No sooner had the Erie Canal been finished, than a brisk trade developed along the American shores. Scores of brigs and schooners were built at Buffalo and Erie to transport the wheat and Lardner, lumber products of the pioneer settlements to Eastern Railway Economy, markets. Nine tenths of this traffic was between United 311-325. States ports and thus was reserved to our own vessels. A little steamer, Walk-in-the-Water, was launched at Buffalo in 1819. She was the first of a mighty fleet. Lake steamers were built stanch and broad to breast the winds and waves of these inland seas. The side wheel, still customary in ocean craft, was found impracticable where Chart, Post Roads and Canals, P. 206. De Bow, 325. Lardner, Ch. I. canals and narrow channels were to be traversed, and Ericsson's screw propeller gradually superseded the original model. In 1862 the sailing tonnage of the Lake fleet was 254,799 and the steam tonnage 125,620. Nearly half of this last was propeller built. The Our wonderful waterway to the heart of the continent was extended and improved by numerous canals. Canadian government built the Welland Canal in 1833, and the United States government built the locks at Sault Ste. Marie in 1855. The dangerous passage through Porte des Morts was avoided by a canal from Lake Michigan to Sturgeon Bay. Connection between Chicago and the Mississippi was opened via the Des Plaines and the Illinois rivers in 1848. The old trader's route between Green Bay and Prairie du Chien was made practicable for lake vessels by a canal across the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. By this means, a boat loaded at Buffalo might reach the Falls of St. Anthony, the Yellowstone, or New Orleans without shifting her cargo. A steamer of moderate bulk and draught might, indeed, make the trip from Baltimore to New Orleans by inland waters, never feeling the ocean swell except for a few hours in New York harbor. The advantages for domestic commerce of safe and cheap transportation throughout this enormous circuit can hardly be overestimated. The New Transportation Agent The crisis of 1837 checked the mania for canal building none too soon. Much of the capital so invested was thrown away, for the canal was destined to be superseded by the railroad. Canal traffic was safe and cheap, but slow and liable to be interrupted by slack water, floods, or frost. The Erie Canal, for example, freezes over in winter, and navigation is stopped for from four to five months in the year. A railroad can be built through mountainous country at one third the cost of a canal, and over heights to which water cannot be conducted. A car run on wheels fitted to the iron track encounters less friction than a wagon on a turnpike, less resistance than a boat in water. Transpor The first railroads were built to supplement the canal Hadley, system, as the ship railway from Hollidaysburg to Johns- Railroad town, the Mauch Chunk extension of the Lehigh Canal, tation, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's tramway Ch. II. from Carbondale to Honesdale. Cars loaded with coal Adams, and stone were drawn over these iron tracks by stationary Railroads, engines, horse power, and even sails. The first locomo-1-79. tive was imported from England by the Delaware and Hulbert, Hudson Company in 1829, but it proved impracticable Canals," because the track had not been built for so heavy a I, 179–181. weight. Gt. Am. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Brown, After diverse experiments, the Baltimore and Ohio man- Reizenstein, agement chose steam as the most practicable motor (1831). Peter Cooper's engine, the "Tom Thumb," made the trial trip over the thirteen miles of track between Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills in one hour. In the same autumn, several trips were made over the South Carolina Railroad from Charleston to Hamburg. The "Best Friend " ran from sixteen to twenty-one miles an hour with five loaded cars attached; without the cars, the speed attained was from thirty to thirty-five miles an hour. The following year the "De Witt Clinton " made a trial trip on the railroad then building up the Mohawk Valley. The seventeen miles from Albany to Schenectady were covered in an hour. On the occasion of the formal opening of this line, the legislators XVII, then assembled at Albany were conveyed to Schenectady XXVIIand there dined in state. One of the toasts voiced a daring XXIX. prophecy. "The Buffalo Railroad, May we soon breakfast in Utica, dine in Rochester, and sup with our friends on Lake Erie !" The journey from Albany to Buffalo by swiftest packet boat required at that time three or four days. Speed is an all-important consideration in the transportation of passengers and perishable freight. Therefore am motives in Am., Ch. XV, XX-XXIII, |