But Clinton and his supporters believed in it, and worked hard to make it a success. They said that the cost of carrying a ton of produce in wagons a distance of one hundred miles was about thirty-two dollars. The experience of others had proved that in canals a ton could be carried one mile for one cent, or a hundred miles for one dollar. There is a great difference between one dollar and thirty-two dollars, especially if the difference is added to the cost of the wheat from which our bread is made, or of the lumber used in building our houses. Clinton himself thought that it might take ten or fifteen years to make the canal, but, as we shall see, it was finished in less time than he supposed. Clinton declared very truly that New York was especially fortunate, for the surface made it an easy task to dig the ditch. There was no high or rough ground to be crossed, there was plenty of water to keep the canal full, and it would run through a fertile and rich country. As Clinton was governor of New York during much of the period in which the canal was made, his name is imperishably connected with the great enterprise. He was once candidate for the office of President of the United States, but perhaps even that office, if he had been elected, would not have given him so much honor as did the building of this great public work. Canals were not new in Clinton’s time. Long before the Christian era began men had dug them to carry water for various uses, such as irrigation and turning machinery. Often, as for hundreds of years in the fen country of England, canals have been used to drain wet or flooded lands and for moving boats. Even beavers have been known to dig ditches, which fill with water, that they may float the wood which they cut to the place where they build their dams and their homes.