The first steamer on Lake Erie was the _Walk-in-the-Water_, built at Black Rock, near Buffalo, by one Noah Brown, and launched May 28th, 1818. She was schooner-rigged, 135 feet in length, 32 feet beam and 13 feet 3 inches deep: her tonnage was 383-60/95 tons. Her machinery was brought from Albany, a distance of three hundred miles, in wagons drawn by five to eight horses each. She left Black Rock on her first voyage August 25th, and reached Detroit, 290 miles, in 44 hours 10 minutes. “While she could navigate down stream, her power was not sufficient to make headway against the strong current of the Niagara River. Resort was therefore made to what was known in the early days as a “horned breeze.” The _Walk-in the-Water_ was regularly towed up the Niagara River by a number of yokes of oxen, but once above the swift current she went very well.” She made regular trips between Black Rock and Detroit, occasionally going as far as Mackinac and Green Bay on Lake Huron, until November, 1821, when she was driven ashore near Buffalo in a gale of wind and became a total wreck. Her engines, however, were recovered and put in a new boat named the _Superior_, in 1822. Soon after this the first high-pressure steamer on the lakes was built at Buffalo. She was named the _Pioneer_. In 1841 the first lake propeller was launched at Oswego. This was the _Vandalia_, of 160 tons, said to be the first freight boat in America to make use of Ericsson’s screw propeller. She made her first trip in November, 1841, and proved entirely successful. In the spring of 1842 she passed through the Welland Canal, and was visited by large numbers of people in Buffalo, who were curious to see this new departure in steam navigation, and the result was that two new propellers were built in that year at Buffalo, the _Sampson_ and the _Hercules_. Soon after the introduction of steamboats, and because of them, when as yet railroads were not in this part of the world, Lake Erie became the great highway of travel to the western States, and it was not long until magnificent upper cabin steamers, carrying from 1,000 to 1,500 passengers, were plying between Buffalo and Chicago. The writer well remembers making the voyage in one of these steamers late in the autumn of 1844, and that, owing to the tempestuous state of the weather, we had to tie up most every night, so that the voyage lasted nearly a whole week. The crowd of passengers was great, but it was a good-natured crowd, bent on having a “good time.” Dancing was kept up in the main saloon every evening till midnight, after which many of us were glad to get a shake-down on the cabin floor. [Illustration: THE “PRINCETON.” First propeller on the lakes that had an upper cabin—one of a fleet of fourteen passenger steamers plying between Buffalo and Chicago in 1845—had twin screws, and a speed of eleven miles an hour.]