From trail to railway through the Appalachians — Background and Themes

w York people, who tried to show that theirs was the better port. As if to help in the fight against Boston, the harbor froze over in the winter of 1844, and the Cunard ship, the _Britannia_, could not sail. Determined to hold their own, the Boston people engaged Frederick Tudor, a great exporter of ice, to bring his machinery from the fresh-water ponds and cut a way. He soon made a lane of open water, and the _Britannia_ sailed out for Liverpool.

While ocean trade was growing much had been done on the land. Settlements were first made at Plymouth, Salem, and Boston, and as soon as possible the rough forest trails joining these towns were changed into roads. Many ferries and bridges were needed to cross the streams, and roads were carried back into the country as the people settled farther from the sea.

After Providence was begun, in the Narragansett country, and the rich lands along the Connecticut were settled, there was need of roads across the hills of Massachusetts, so that the colonists could visit each other, exchange letters, and thus be less exposed to danger from savages in the great American wilderness.

The highway leading along the east coast was called Bay Road. A post rider went between Boston and New York in 1704, and a rough path he had to travel. It was thought remarkable, four years later, that a woman, Madam Sarah Knights, made that journey. She afterwards taught school in Boston, and Benjamin Franklin was one of her pupils. Somebody scratched these lines on a window pane in her schoolroom:

Through many toils and many frights I have returned, poor Sarah Knights; Over great rocks and many stones, God has preserved from fractured bones.

There is no doubt about the “great rocks and many stones” of New England, but around Boston, at any rate, one usually sees them now at a safe distance.

In western Massachusetts is the great Berkshire country. Through most of its length the Housatonic river runs to the southward. At the north the Hoosick river flows from it, across a corner of Vermont, to the Hudson. On the first is beautiful Pittsfield, and on the second is busy North Adams with its mills. In sight everywhere are the mountains, not very high and usually covered with forest, but sometimes bold and rocky. Farther north we should call them the Green mountains, but here we name them the Berkshires. The eastern range, which separates the Housatonic valley on the west from the Connecticut valley on the east, is Hoosac mountain, of which we shall hear again.

These long ranges of mountains run from north to south, and while it was easy to follow the valleys between them, it was hard to go across them from east to west or from west to east. Boston and all the chief towns of New England lay eastward, and the rest of the country was west of the mountains. If a Massachusetts family wished to settle in the fertile lands of western New York or Ohio, they had to cross the mountains. In our day the mountain region is full of towns and beautiful summer homes, but then it was a wilderness which in places was almost impassable. If it was difficult to make a single journey between the Connecticut river and the Hudson, it was quite out of the question to carry grain and fruit from the West to Boston, and to bring back in exchange the goods made in her factories.

Near Pittsfield, in the heart of the Berkshires, rises the Westfield river, which has cut a deep valley eastward through the mountains. Opposite the place where this stream enters the Connecticut the beautiful city of Springfield has now grown up, partly on the low grounds and partly on a terrace. It is readily seen that the Westfield valley forms a natural roadway from here westward to Pittsfield, and on toward Albany and the Mohawk in New York. We cannot say that the valley was made for the cities, but the cities were made, in part at least, because the valley was there.

The first roads that improved on the Indian trails were, of course, made for wagons. The gorge of the Westfield was so rugged that a hundred years ago it seemed almost impossible to make a good wagon road through it. There were some people, however, who thought that it could be done and who determined to do it. Their courage won, and before long there was a good highway all along the roaring river. The bowlders were rolled out of the way, the trees were cut, the roadbed was made, and people could go east and west in the stages without risk of losing their lives or even of breaking their bones. This was accomplished soon after 1825, but it did not solve all the problems of the Massachusetts people, for, as we shall soon learn fully, the Erie canal was finished in that year, and a long string of canal boats began to carry produce from the West to New York.

The good people of Boston watched all this going on. Every load of grain was headed straight eastward as if it were coming to Massachusetts bay, thence to go by vessel to Europe. But when it reached the Hudson it was sure to turn off down that river to help load ships at the piers of New York. And New England had only a wagon road across the mountains! A wagon road will never draw trade away from a tidal river, and thus we can understand why a prominent Massachusetts man, Charles Francis Adams, spoke of the Hudson as “a river so fatal to Boston.” Boston might have all the ships she wanted, but if she could not get cargoes for them they would be of no use. Shipowners, seeing that there was plenty of western freight in New York, sent their boats there. It was indeed time that Boston people began to ask themselves what they could do.

They still had ships, but these were usually “down East” coasters, and the noble vessels from far eastern ports, laden with spices and teas, silks, and all the spoils of Europe and Asia, rarely came to Boston, but brought more and greater loads to New York and Baltimore, where they could lay in corn and wheat for the return voyage. Even the Cunards transferred most of their boats and finally all their mail steamers to New York.

The people of Boston first said, “We will build another canal, up the Hoosick and down the Deerfield valley, and then the canal boats will keep on to the east.” As states often do, they appointed a commission to see if the canal could be built, and what it would cost. But what were they to do about Hoosac mountain, which stood a thousand feet high, of solid rock, between the Hoosick valley on the west and the Deerfield valley on the east?

They decided that they would tunnel it for the water way. Rather strangely they thought it could be done for a little less than a million dollars. A wise engineer made the survey for the canal, and when he remarked, “It seems as if the finger of Providence had pointed out this route from the east to the west,” some one who stood near replied, “It’s a great pity that the same finger wasn’t thrust through the mountain.” The plans for the canal were finally given up, and though many years later such a tunnel was made, it was not for a canal, nor was the work done for a million dollars.

Every one was talking now of railways, but few thought that rails could be laid across the Berkshires. It was even said in a Boston paper that such a road could never be built to Albany; that it would cost as much to do it as all Massachusetts would sell for; and that if it should be finished, everybody with common sense knew it would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon. We need not be too hard on this writer, for it was five years later when the De Witt Clinton train climbed the hill from Albany and carried its handful of passengers to Schenectady.

One of the friends of the railway scheme was Abner Phelps. When he was a senior at Williams College, in 1806, he had thought of it, for he had heard about the tram cars in the English coal regions. In 1826 he became a member of the legislature of Massachusetts, and the second day he was there he proposed that the road should be built.

In time the project went through, but at first it was planned to pull the cars with horses, and on the down grades to take the horses on the cars and let them ride. We do not know how it was intended that the cars should be held back, for it was long before the invention of air brakes. The line was built to its western end on the Hudson in 1842, and thus Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Albany were bound together by iron rails.

There was only a single track and the grades were heavy. The road brought little trade to Boston, and most of the goods from the West still went by way of the Hudson to New York. It was, however, a beginning, and it showed that the mountain wall could be crossed.

The subject of a Hoosac tunnel now came up again. It would take a long time to tell how the tunnel was made; indeed, it was a long time in making. It was begun in 1850 or soon afterwards, and the work went slowly, with many stops and misfortunes, so that the hole through the mountain was not finished until November 27, 1873. On that day the last blast was set off, which made the opening from the east to the west side; and the first regular passenger train ran through July 8, 1875, fifty years after it had been planned to make a canal under the mountain.

In order to help on the work the engineers sunk a shaft a thousand feet deep from the top of the mountain to the level of the tunnel, and from the bottom worked east and west. This gave them four faces, or “headings,” on which to work, instead of two, and hastened the finishing. The whole cost was about fourteen million dollars.

It took great skill to sink the shaft on just the right line, and to make the parts of the tunnel exactly meet, as the men worked in from opposite directions. They brought the ends together under the mountain with a difference of only five sixteenths of an inch! You can measure this on a finger nail and see how much it is. The tremendous task was successfully accomplished, and Boston was no longer shut off from the rest of the country by the mountains.

The end of it all is not that Boston has won all the ships away from New York, but that gradually she has been getting her share. Now she has great Cunarders, White Star Liners, and the Leyland boats,--all giant ships sailing for Liverpool,--and many other stately vessels bound for southern ports or foreign lands. Now you may see in Boston harbor not a forest of masts but great funnels painted to show the lines to which the boats belong, and marking a grander commerce than that which put out for the Indies long years ago; for to-day Boston is the second American port. The great freight yards of the railways are close upon the docks, and travelers from the West may come into either of two great stations, one of which is the largest railway terminal in the world. In and about Boston are more than a million people, reaching out with one hand for the riches of the great land to the west, and with the other passing them over the seas to the nations on the farther side.

Man has taken a land of dense forests, stony hills, and wild valleys, and subdued it. It is dotted with cities, crossed by roads, and is one of the great gateways of North America.

PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND THE HUDSON

If a stranger from a distant land should come to New York, he might take an elevated train at the Battery and ride to the upper end of Harlem. He would then have seen Manhattan island, so named by the Indians, who but three hundred years ago built their wigwams there and paddled their canoes in the waters where great ships now wait for their cargoes. If the visitor should stay for a time, he might find that Harlem used to be spelled Haarlem, from a famous old town in Holland. He might walk through Bleecker street, or Cortlandt street, or see Stuyvesant square, and learn that these hard names belonged to old Dutch families; and if he studied history, he would find that the town was once called New Amsterdam and was settled by Dutchmen from Holland. They named the river on the west of the island the Great North river, to distinguish it from the Delaware, or Great South river, and they planned to keep all the land about these two streams and to call it New Netherland.

Rocks and trees covered most of Manhattan island at that time, but the Dutch had a small village at its south end, where they built a fort and set up windmills, which ground the corn and made the place look like a town in Holland. The Indians did not like the windmills with their “big teeth biting the corn in pieces,” but they were usually friendly with the settlers, sometimes sitting before the fireplaces in the houses and eating supawn, or mush and milk, with their white friends. Little did the Indian dream what a bargain he offered to the white man when he consented to sell the whole island for a sum equal to twenty-four dollars; and the Dutchman, to do him justice, was equally ignorant.

All this came about because Henry Hudson with a Dutch vessel, the _Half Moon_, had sailed into the harbor in 1609, and had explored the river for a long distance from its mouth. Hudson was an Englishman, but with most people he has had to pass for a Dutchman. He has come down in stories as Hendrick instead of Henry, no doubt because he commanded a ship belonging to a Dutch company, and because a Dutch colony was soon planted at the mouth of the river which he discovered.

Hudson spent a month of early autumn about Manhattan and on the river which afterwards took his name. Sailing was easy, for the channel is cut so deep into the land that the tides, which rise and fall on the ocean border by day and night, push far up the Hudson and make it like an inland sea. In what we call the Highlands Hudson found the river narrow, with rocky cliffs rising far above him. Beyond he saw lowlands covered with trees, and stretching west to the foot of the Catskill mountains. He went at least as far as the place where Albany now stands, but there he found the water shallow and turned his ship about, giving up the idea of reaching the Indies by going that way. He did not know that a few miles to the west a deep valley lies open through the mountains, a valley which is now full of busy people and is more important for travel and trade than a dozen northwest passages to China would be.

It was not long before this valley which leads to the west was found, and by a real Dutchman. Only five years after Hudson’s voyage Dutch traders built a fort near the spot where Albany now stands. Shortly afterwards, in 1624, the first settlers came and founded Fort Orange, which is now Albany. Arent Van Curler came over from Holland in 1630 and made his home near Fort Orange. He was an able man and became friendly with the Indians. They called him “Brother Corlear” and spoke of him as their “good friend.” A few years ago a diary kept by Van Curler was found in an old Dutch garret, where it had lain for two hundred and sixty years. It told the story of a journey that he made in 1634, only four years after he came to America. Setting out on December 11, he traveled up the valley of the Mohawk until he reached the home of the Oneida Indians in central New York. He stayed with them nearly two weeks, and then returned to Fort Orange, where he arrived on January 19. This is the earliest record of a white man’s journey through a region which now contains large towns and is traversed by many railway trains every day in the year.

No one knows how long there had been Indians and Indian trails in the Mohawk valley. These trails Van Curler followed, often coming upon some of the red men themselves, and visiting them in a friendly way. They, as well as the white settlers who followed them, chose the flat, rich lands along the river, for here it was easy to beat a path, and with their bark canoes they could travel and fish. The Indians entertained Van Curler with baked pumpkins, turkey, bear meat, and venison. As the turkey is an American bird, we may be sure that it was new to the Dutch explorer.

These Indians, with whom Van Curler and all the New York colonists had much to do, were of several tribes,--the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. All together they were known as the Iroquois (ĭr-ṓ-kwoi´), or Iroquois Nation, a kind of confederation which met in council and went forth together to war. They called their five-fold league The Long House, from the style of dwelling which was common among them,--a long house in which as many as twenty families sometimes lived. The Iroquois built villages, cultivated plots of land, and sometimes planted apple orchards. They were often eloquent orators and always fierce fighters. Among the surrounding tribes they were greatly feared. They sailed on lake Ontario and lake Erie in their birch-bark canoes, and they followed the trails far eastward down the Mohawk valley. Before the white men came these fierce warriors occasionally invaded New England, to the terror of the weaker tribes. Sometimes they followed up their conquests by exacting a tribute of wampum. After Fort Orange was founded they went there with their packs of beaver skins and other furs to trade for clothes and trinkets.

In fact the white man’s principal interest for many years was to barter for furs. The Dutch, and soon afterwards the English, bid for the trade from their settlements on the Hudson, and the French did the same from their forts on the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Thus there was much letter writing and much fighting among the colonists, while each side tried to make friends of the Indians and get the whole of the fur trade. The result was that either in war or in trade the white men and the savages were always going up and down the Mohawk valley, which thus was a well-traveled path long before there were turnpike roads, canals, or steam cars.

When Van Curler made his journey into the Indian country, he did not reach the Mohawk river at once on leaving Fort Orange, but traveled for about sixteen miles across a sandy and half-barren stretch of scrubby pine woods. He came down to the river where its rich bottom lands spread out widely and where several large islands are inclosed by parts of the stream. South and east of these flats are the sand barrens, and on the west are high hills through which, by a deep, narrow gap, the Mohawk flows. The Indians called this place “Schonowe,” or “gateway.” It was well named, for entering by this gate one can go to the foot of the Rocky mountains without climbing any heights.