Their investigations having proved the presence of large bodies of coal, the Wurts brothers next procured title to the lands containing it, and then turned their attention to the problem of finding an outlet to market. They decided finally to ship coal on rafts by the Wallenpaupack Creek to the Lackawaxen, by the Lackawaxen to the Delaware, and thence to Philadelphia. This method was experimented on from 1814 to 1822 with varying degrees of disaster. In the year last mentioned they succeeded in taking to Philadelphia 100 tons of coal, only to find the market flooded with 2,240 tons of Lehigh coal. Competition was apparently hopeless; but instead of abandoning the enterprise, as men of less energy and perseverance would now have done, Maurice Wurts turned his attention to a new project. This was nothing less than to make an outlet to the New York market by building a canal which should reach from the Hudson River at Rondout, across to the Delaware at Port Jervis, and thence up that stream and the Lackawaxen to the nearest practicable point east of the coal beds. But when that point should be reached there would still be the Moosic Mountain, with its towering heights and precipitous bluffs, lying between the boats and the mines. The Wurts brothers did not acknowledge this to be a serious obstacle. They proposed to overcome this difficulty by building across the mountains a railroad, which should consist largely of inclined planes, the cars to be drawn up and let down these planes by means of stationary steam-engines, and to move along the stretches between the planes by force of gravity. Having formed their plans they set to work to carry them out. They procured the necessary legislation from the States of New York and Pennsylvania, they secured a charter in 1823–25 for a corporation known as the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, and by dint of supreme personal effort they succeeded in obtaining capital enough to begin and carry on the work. In 1828 the canal was completed to its terminus at Honesdale, the gravity railroad having been already constructed from the coal fields to that point, and in 1829 the company began to ship coal to tide-water on the Hudson. It was a bold and ingenious scheme, and for those days it was an enterprise of immense proportions. That these two men conceived it and earned it out in the face of great difficulties and against overwhelming odds entitles them to a place in those higher orders of genius that are touched with the light of the heroic. The Lackawanna region has been pierced by many other lines of railway, and to-day by these great highways a vast amount of Lackawanna coal is sent to the eastern cities and the seaboard.