The locomotive, having no train behind it, answered at once to the movement of the hand; ... soon the straight line was run over, the curve was reached and passed before there was time to think as to its not being passed safely, and soon I was out of sight in the three miles' ride alone in the woods of Pennsylvania. I had never run a locomotive nor any other engine before; I have never run one since. [Illustration: Horatio Allen.] The two engines contracted for with Messrs. Stephenson & Co. were made by them, and Mr. Allen has informed the writer that they were built on substantially the same plans that were afterward embodied in the famous "Rocket." They were shipped to New York and for a time were stored in an iron warehouse on the east side of the city, where they were exhibited to the public. They were never sent to the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company's road, and it is not now known whatever became of them. If they had been put to work on their arrival here the use of engines of the "Rocket" type would have been anticipated on this side the Atlantic. The first railroad which was undertaken for the transportation of freight and passengers in this country, on a comprehensive scale, was the Baltimore & Ohio. Its construction was begun in 1828. The laying of rails was commenced in 1829, and in May, 1830, the first section of fifteen miles from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills was opened. It was probably about this time that the animated sketch of the car given by Peter Parley was made. From 1830 to 1835 many lines were projected, and at the end of that year there were over a thousand miles of road in use. Whether the motive power on these roads should be horses or steam was for a long time an open question. The celebrated trial of locomotives on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, in England, was made in 1829. Reports of these trials, and of the use of locomotive engines on the Stockton & Darlington line, were published in this country, and, as Mr. Charles Francis Adams says, "The country, therefore, was not only ripe to accept the results of the Rainhill contest, but it was anticipating them with eager hope." In 1829 Mr. Horatio Allen, who had been in England the year before to learn all that could then be learned about steam locomotion, reported to the South Carolina Railway Company in favor of steam instead of horse power for that line. The basis of that report, he says, "Was on the broad ground that in the future there was no reason to expect any material improvement in the breed of horses, while, in my judgment, the man was not living who knew what the breed of locomotives was to place at command." [Illustration: Fig. 4.--Peter Cooper's Locomotive, 1830.]