



Produced by Greg Bergquist and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA

VOLUME 14




  [Illustration: VIEW OF OLD ERIE CANAL BASIN AT BUFFALO]




  HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA
  VOLUME 14

  The Great American Canals

  BY
  ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT

  _With Maps and Illustrations_

  Volume II
  The Erie Canal

  [Illustration]

  THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY
  CLEVELAND, OHIO
  1904




  COPYRIGHT, 1904
  BY
  THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS


                                            PAGE
  PREFACE                                     11
    I. THE MOHAWK AND ITS IMPROVEMENT         15
   II. EARLY PROMOTERS AND THEIR DREAMS       43
  III. CLINTON'S MEMORIAL                     62
   IV. PLANNING, BUILDING, AND OPENING       104
    V. LOCAL INFLUENCES OF THE CANAL         152
   VI. THE CANAL FUND AND ENLARGEMENTS       178
  APPENDIXES                                 211




ILLUSTRATIONS


    I. VIEW OF OLD ERIE CANAL BASIN AT BUFFALO          _Frontispiece_

   II. MAP AND PROFILE OF THE ERIE CANAL (from Poussin's
        "Travaux d'ameliorations interieures... des
        Etats-Unis d'Amerique de 1824 a 1831"--Paris, 1834)        107

  III. A CANAL LOCK AT ROME, NEW YORK, TOUCHING THE SITE
        OF FORT STANWIX                                            117

   IV. VIEW OF CANAL AT LITTLE FALLS, NEW YORK, SHOWING
        LOCK 37 IN THE DISTANCE                                    133

    V. MAP OF ERIE CANAL, SHOWING IMPROVEMENTS PROPOSED (from
        report of February 12, 1901)                               205




PREFACE


This second monograph on the great American canals which played the part
of important highways westward, is devoted to an outline of the Erie
Canal. In the comparatively short space at our disposal for so great a
theme, it has been possible only to sketch some of the leading features
of our subject, namely, the early history of the Mohawk Valley route,
the origin of the canal idea, its building, the celebration of its
completion, a catalogue of its finances and enlargements, and its
effect.

Our sources have been the state _Reports_, Sweet's _Documentary
History_, Hawley's _Origin of the Erie Canal_, and the various state and
local histories which treat of the subject. A monograph, in the form of
a thesis, by Julius Winden, has been of great advantage, as will be
indicated, in presenting the influence of the Erie Canal upon the
population along its course.

The author is under a debt of gratitude to Hon. A. R. Spofford of the
Congressional Library, Hon. John S. Billings of the New York Public
Library, and T. M. Ripley of Marietta, Ohio, for advice and assistance.

                                                              A. B. H.

MARIETTA, OHIO, March 4, 1904.




The Great American Canals


Volume II

The Erie Canal




CHAPTER I

THE MOHAWK AND ITS IMPROVEMENT


The "great western" route through New York State to the Lakes has come
under consideration in our study of highways in three places: as an
Indian trail, as a portage path, and as a pioneer road. The old Iroquois
Trail, as we have called it, ran up the Mohawk, which it crossed at
Nun-da-da-sis, "around the hill," (Utica); thence it made for the
Genesee River and the Niagara frontier; an important tributary pathway
led down the Genesee to Swa-geh (Oswego) on Lake Ontario. This was the
landward route from the Hudson to the Great Lakes. As a thoroughfare in
its entirety, it meant much to the Indians, but very little to the white
men before the nineteenth century. Though the lower Mohawk Valley was
sparsely settled early in the eighteenth century, white men did not
build their cabins along the Iroquois Trail to the westward until
nearly a century later, when the old Genesee Road was opened. Until then
the country through which the Iroquois Trail ran had been a _terra
incognita_ where only Indian runners knew the way through the Long House
of the Iroquois. Yet it was a pleasant country for all the forest
shades; from Nun-da-da-sis the trail ran on, leaving the Mohawk River
and Ole-hisk, "the place of nettles"--the famed battlefield of
Oriskany--to the north, passing Ka-ne-go-dick (Wood Creek) and
Ga-no-a-lo-hole (Lake Oneida), the "Lake of the Head on a Pole."[1] To
the southward, the path bore away toward Na-ta-dunk (Syracuse), the
place of the "broken pine-tree," and Ga-do-quat (Fort Brewerton). There
were the silver lakes strung like white gems on wreaths of heaviest
green. The low lands of the Genesee country, soon to see the great
advances heralded by the famous purchases of land speculators,
intervened; and straight beyond, far away across the pine-tree tops,
gleamed the Great Lakes and the plunging river between them; the deep
growl of Niagara seemed to warn voyageurs away to the forest trails on
either