Learning that the canal would be completed about October 26, the corporation of New York City entered into correspondence with the chief cities and towns along the line concerning the proper celebration of the event. Two aldermen, King and Davis, were sent to Buffalo from New York to participate in the festivities of the great occasion. Buffalo was in gala dress on the day set for the pageant. The city was filled with yeomanry. At nine o'clock in the morning the grand procession formed before the court-house; the Buffalo band, squads of riflemen, and the committees took the lead and the vast throng moved to the head of the Erie Canal where the canal-boat "Seneca Chief" lay at anchor. Governor Clinton, the lieutenant-governor, and the committees were received on board, and Jesse Hawley, who, nearly a generation before, had published in Pittsburg the first broadside in favor of the canal, delivered an address in behalf of the citizens of Rochester, "to mingle and reciprocate their mutual congratulations with the citizens of Buffalo on this grand effort." The "Seneca Chief" was bravely equipped and manned for the occasion. Two great paintings occupied conspicuous positions. One presented the scene which was at the moment being enacted, Buffalo Creek and harbor with the canal in the foreground and the "Seneca Chief" moving away. The other picture represented Governor Clinton as Hercules, in Roman costume resting from hard labor. Among the articles of freight to be carried by this boat, which should first pass from Buffalo to New York over the Erie canal, were two kegs filled with Lake Erie water. In addition to the governor of the state and his staff, the Buffalo committee embarked on the "Seneca Chief," comprising Hon. Judge Wilkinson, Captain Joy, Colonel Potter, Major Burt, Colonel Dox, and Doctor Stagg. The flotilla, which was headed by the "Seneca Chief," consisted of the canal-boats "Chief," "Superior," "Commodore Perry" (a freight boat), and the "Buffalo" (of Erie, Pennsylvania). "Noah's Ark" was the name of another craft which contained beasts, birds and creeping things--a bear, two eagles, two fawns, several fish, and two Indian boys, all traveling under the title of "products of the West." When the flotilla set sail a signal gun was discharged at Buffalo; the announcement was taken up by each gun in a long line from Buffalo to New York and the signal was passed throughout the entire distance.