The two great sections of the canal and the Portage Railway were finished in 1835. Goods then went by rail from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna river. There the boats took them to the east end of the Portage road. The next haul was over the Allegheny Front, with its lofty forests, to Johnstown. Then the boats received the merchandise and landed it in Pittsburg, whence other boats could carry it to any town on the Ohio river. The _Hit or Miss_ was one of the boats that came up to Hollidaysburg. It was desirable to take this particular boat over the heights, so a car was built which would fit its keel. The car was dragged up the east side of the mountain and down to Johnstown, where the boat was put into the water again and sent off to the Mississippi river. We can now look across a gorge from the coaches of the Pennsylvania Railroad, beyond Altoona, and see the grade of the old Portage Railway. [Illustration: FIG. 28. BROAD STREET STATION, PHILADELPHIA: PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD] The canal almost put out of business the Conestoga wagons on the dusty pike which had seen so much travel by way of Carlisle and Bedford. But the people did not stop with a canal. Like the men of New York, they wanted something even better than that. They wished to have a railroad all the way, and in 1846 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was incorporated. By this time it was very well known that railroads were successful both in America and in England, and that steam was better than horses. Over the Allegheny Front a route was found where the grades were not too steep for locomotives. The grade, of course, had been the one great hindrance to the whole project, and when this difficulty was overcome there was no reason why passengers should not be carried from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, or a load of iron from Pittsburg to Philadelphia, without changing cars. In the year 1854 the Pennsylvania people triumphed, for they had conquered the mountains and could run trains from the banks of the Delaware to the Ohio river. If we leave Philadelphia by the great Broad street station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, we shall pass out among the pleasant homes of West Philadelphia and through the fine farms of the Pennsylvania lowlands, until we come, in about an hour and a half, to the staid old city of Lancaster. We have been here before, to learn of turnpikes and Conestoga freighters. The next stop, if we are on an express train, will be at Harrisburg, a little more than a hundred miles from Philadelphia. We have now come from the Delaware to the Susquehanna, and are close to the mountains. Before we go in among them let us see Harrisburg. It is a city of fifty thousand people, and lies along the east bank of the Susquehanna, which here is a great river a mile wide, having gathered its tribute of waters from hundreds of branching streams in Pennsylvania and New York. [Illustration: FIG. 29. BRIDGE, PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD, ABOVE HARRISBURG]