THE STATES BUILD CANALS AND ROADS.--All this time population was increasing, the West was growing, interstate trade was developing, new towns and villages were springing up, and farms increasing in number as the people moved to the new lands. The need of cheap transportation became greater and greater each year, and as Congress would do nothing, the states took upon themselves the work of building roads and canals. What a canal could do to open up a country was shown when the Erie Canal was finished in 1825 (see p. 273). So many people by that time had settled along its route, that the value of land and the wealth of the state were greatly increased. [10] The merchants of New York could then send their goods up the Hudson, by the canal to Buffalo, and then to Cleveland or Detroit, or by Chautauqua Lake and the Allegheny to Pittsburg, for about one third of what it cost before the canal was opened (maps, pp. 267, 279). Buffalo began to grow with great rapidity, and in a few years its trade had reached Chicago. In 1839 eight steamboats plied between these two towns. A TRIP ON A CANAL PACKET.--Passengers traveled on the canal in packet boats, as they were called. The hull of such a craft was eighty feet long and eleven feet wide, and carried on its deck a long, low house with flat roof and sloping sides. In each side were a dozen or more windows with green blinds and red curtains. When the weather was fine, passengers sat on the roof, reading, talking, or sewing, till the man at the helm called "Low bridge!" when everybody would rush down the steps and into the cabin, to come forth once more when the bridge was passed. Walking on the roof when the packet was crowded was impossible. Those who wished such exercise had to take it on the towpath. Three horses abreast could drag a packet boat some four miles an hour. [Illustration: LOCKS ON THE ERIE CANAL, ROCKPORT, N.Y.] WESTERN ROUTES.--Aroused by the success of the Erie Canal, Pennsylvania began a great highway from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. As planned, it was to be part canal and part turnpike over the mountains. But before it was completed, railroads came into use, and when finished, it was part railroad, part canal. Not to be outdone by New York and Pennsylvania, the people of Baltimore began the construction (1828) of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first in the country for the carriage of passengers and freight. [11] Massachusetts, alarmed at the prospect of losing her trade with the West, appointed (1827) a commission and an engineer to select a route for a railroad to join Boston and Albany. Ohio had already commenced a canal from Cleveland to the Ohio. [12]