During the first season of work fifty-eight miles on the summit level were placed under contract, but most of the contractors were compelled to cease work when the frosts came. In December, 1817, from $200 to $1,000 each was advanced to contractors with which to buy provisions for their men; beef, pork, and flour were cheaper at this season than in the spring, and the roads over which they were to be transported were likewise better in the winter season than at any other. This first year of work had brought its lessons; first and foremost it proved what a tremendous burden lay on the shoulders of the commissioners and engineers. Contracts innumerable were to be made and signed, calling for the provision of a hundred necessities: principally for stone, lumber, and lime; the proper quantities were to be deposited at the proper places--here in a heavy forest, there beside a swamp, and yonder at the foot of a hill. The country was quite innocent of anything that approached such a road as was needed everywhere along the line of work. It is difficult even to hint at the multitude of perplexing questions that the builders of the Erie Canal faced and somehow solved. The year had proved the advisability of discarding the spade and wheelbarrow--the European implements for canal building--for the plough and scraper. With the latter tools the work was more quickly done and better; the feet of the horses drawing them tended to solidify the earth along the embankments. Three Irishmen finished three rods of the canal, four feet deep in five and one-half days. Sixteen and one-half days work accomplished 249-1/2 cubic yards of canal, which at twelve and one-half cents per yard made $1.80 for each man per day. As the year progressed it was found that the contracts were inside of the figures of the estimates originally made. When the season of 1818 was on, between two and three thousand men and half that number of horses and cattle were at work. Indeed some of the contractors had worked all winter, and many had transported the necessary provisions and tools for the summer's campaign to the points of work on sleds during the winter. The Genesee Road between Utica and Syracuse, the most important of all, was useless for heavy loads in the summer season. During this season the entire Middle Section was put under contract; the only important change of route was at the Marl Meadows near Camillus; this swamp without an outlet was avoided by running a new route through the Salina plains, at an estimated saving of some $17,000.