Swiftly one piece after another of the canal was finished and the water let in. The trench was found to hold water, and boats were soon busy hauling produce from town to town. In 1825 it was finished from Black Rock, or Buffalo, to Waterford, above Troy. The work had taken eight years and had cost a little less than eight million dollars. De Witt Clinton was right and the croakers were wrong. Perhaps it was hard at that time to find any one who did not think that he had always wanted a canal. There were, it is true, a few disappointed ones at Schenectady. There the wagons from Albany had always stopped, and there the boating up the Mohawk had begun. As all the loads had to be shifted between the river and the land journeys, there had been work for many men. Thus the place had grown up, and now that boats were to run through without change, some people naturally thought that the town would die out, or would at least lose much of its business. These few discontented folk, however, were hardly to be counted, among the thousands who exulted over the completed canal. [Illustration: FIG. 15. ALONG THE CANAL IN SYRACUSE Copyrighted, 1899, by A. P. Yates, Syracuse, N.Y.] A great celebration was arranged, and the rejoicings of the beginning were redoubled in the festivities at the end. Boats were made ready at Buffalo to take Governor Clinton and the other guests to New York. When the first boat entered the canal from lake Erie a cannon was fired. Cannon had been set within hearing distance all the way to the sea along the line of the canal. This way of sending news was the nearest approach to the telegraph at that time. Soon the tidings of the great event came booming down among the cliffs of the Hudson and reached New York.[1] [1] The time allowed for the signaling from Buffalo to Sandy Hook was one hour and twenty minutes. This programme was substantially carried out. From Albany to Sandy Hook only twenty minutes were required. Two kegs of lake Erie water were put on one of the boats at Buffalo, and we shall see what was done with them. There were also two barrels of fine apples which had been raised in an orchard at Niagara Falls. These were not to be eaten on the way, one barrel being for the Town Council of Troy, and the other for the city fathers of New York. Many people on both sides of the ocean are still eating fine apples from the trees of the Genesee country.