Seven steamboats were running on the Ohio and the Mississippi at the close of the War of 1812. Before another year went by, a steamboat had made its way from New Orleans against the currents of the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers to Louisville, laden with goods from Europe. The steamboat had now won a place on the American rivers. It aided in the rapid settlement of the country. It made travel quick and easy, and it carried the goods of settlers up and down the rivers. [Sidenote: =Robert Fulton dies, 1815=] Robert Fulton died in 1815, deeply mourned by all his countrymen, and was buried in Trinity churchyard, New York City. [Sidenote: =Steamboats carry goods up the Mississippi=] [Sidenote: =Erie Canal across New York=] =131. The Erie Canal.= Before Fulton invented the steamboat, supplies had been carried to the western settlers over the mountains from the East. Now, however, steamboats puffed up the Mississippi from New Orleans loaded down with goods that had been brought all the way from Europe. The settlers could get all the supplies they wanted and at a much lower cost. For this reason the merchants of New York and the East were in danger of losing all their trade with the settlers. They saw that they must have some connection with the West by water, and so they planned the Erie Canal. It took seven years to dig. When it was finished it was three hundred sixty-three miles long, forty feet wide, and four feet deep. The depth was later increased to seven feet. It stretched straight across the state of New York from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. In the autumn of 1825, when the canal was finished, there was a great celebration. A "fleet" of canal boats carried Governor Clinton of New York and a number of other distinguished men across the state. [Sidenote: =New York recovered her trade=] The merchants of the East were no longer afraid of the Mississippi route, for they had a route of their own. The canal became the great highway of commerce from the East to the West and from the West to the East. New York recovered her trade, and flourishing cities grew up along the canal. But there were cities in the East that could not use the canal. Farther south they could not dig a canal across the mountains. All their goods had to be carried over the Cumberland Gap on the backs of horses. But a new means of travel and transportation had been invented, which was to far surpass the steamboat and which was to help every city no matter where located. [Sidenote: =The first railroad=] =132. Railroad Building.= The first railroad in America was a very rude affair. There were no "palace cars" or steel rails, nor did the trains run at a speed of sixty miles an hour. Instead, cars that looked like huge wagons ran on wooden rails and were dragged along by horses. [Sidenote: =Stephenson's "Puffing Billy"=]