In 1818 the Eastern Stage Company was chartered in the state of New Hampshire. The route was this: a stage started from Portsmouth at 9 A.M.; passengers dined at Topsfield; thence through Danvers and Salem; back the following day, dining at Newburyport. The capital stock was four hundred and twenty-five shares at a hundred dollars par. In 1834 the stock was worth two hundred dollars a share. The company owned several hundred horses. It was on a coach of this line that Henry Clay rode from Pleasant Street, Salem, to Tremont House, Boston, in exactly an hour; and on the route extended to Portland, Daniel Webster was carried at the rate of sixteen English miles an hour from Boston to Portland to sign the Ashburton Treaty. The middle of the century saw the beginning of the end of coaching in all the states that had been colonies. Further west the old stage-coach had to trundle in order to exist at all: Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, across the plains, and then over the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake. The road from Carson to Plainville gave the crack ride, and the driver wore yellow kid gloves. The coach known as the Concord wagon, drawn by six horses, still makes cheerful the out-of-the-way roads of our Western states, and recalls the life of olden times. The story of spirited and gay life still exists in the Wells Fargo Express. The usefulness of the Concord coach is not limited to the western nor the northern portion of our continent; in South America it flourishes, banishing all rivals. Canal travel and transportation were proposed at the close of provincial days, and a few short canals were built. Benjamin Franklin was early awake to their practicability and value. Among the stock-owners of the Dismal Swamp Canal was George Washington, and he was equally interested in the Potomac Canal. The Erie Canal, first proposed to the New York legislature in 1768, was completed in 1825. There was considerable passenger travel on this canal at "a cent and a half a mile, a mile and a half an hour." Horace Greeley has given an excellent picture of this leisurely travel; it was asserted by some that stage-coaches were doomed by the canal-boat, but they continued to exist till they encountered a more formidable rival.