The larger cities and the greater number of towns are, however, along the Central Railway. Going up the Hudson and the Mohawk, the traveler will hardly pass one busy town before he is in sight of another. When he looks across the river and sees Newburg he will remember that in a plain old house in that city General Washington had his headquarters. When he comes in sight of Albany he will see the great Capitol building standing high over all others. At Schenectady he will think of Arent Van Curler and the old boatmen and the dreadful French and Indian massacre. At Utica he will pass the ford where thousands waded the river as they went to the wilderness. At Rome he will be reminded of the famous carry of Fort Stanwix, of St. Leger, and of the heroes who drove him back to the north. At Syracuse he will ride through miles of closely built streets, and as he leaves the city on the west he will see ancient vats with low sliding roofs. In these vats countless bushels of salt have been made, as the sun has slowly drawn off the water of the brine in vapor. There were buildings, too, with chimneys and great boilers for making salt; but in the main the city has other interests now. It has mills and large stores, and is a railway center. At Rochester our traveler crosses the Genesee, and remembers the hardy pioneer who left comfortable old Hagerstown to build a city in the swamp and forest. Colonel Rochester could have had no idea of the fine city he was starting, or of the orchards, nurseries, and wheat fields that would be around it, but he lived long enough to see the flour mills at the falls doing a thriving business. Thus wheat and flour made Rochester as salt made Syracuse, and first the canal and then the great railway took these useful things to market. An hour or two more and the train pulls into Buffalo, the second city of New York, looking on the lake and stretching out its hands to the great world of inland sea and prairie. To Buffalo come coal and iron and meat and wheat and corn. Here great elevators receive grain from the ships and load canal boats and railway cars for the east. Here some of the New York Central trains turn north and go by Niagara through Canada to the west, while others pass off to the south and west and go to Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago. Since the day when the two kegs were filled with water from lake Erie, Buffalo has become a large city, a gateway of the East and West. And since the De Witt Clinton train crept from Albany to Schenectady, the New York Central Railway has become great also, for every day hundreds of trains of goods and men are coming and going between the Lakes and the city by the sea. CHAPTER VI OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA TO THE WEST