It was decided at the outset that the commercial supremacy of Baltimore rested on her conquest of the Appalachian Mountains, of her reaching by an easy artificial highway the almost limitless waterways of the West that linked themselves with the navigable Ohio. But for the beginning it was agreed that Cumberland, long an important point on the well-famed National Highway, and even then a centre in the coal traffic, was a far enough distant goal to be worthy of the most ambitious enterprise. Indeed a long cutting through a hill in the first section of the road proved a serious financial obstacle to the directors of the struggling railroad. But these last were men who persevered. They started to lay their track for the thirteen miles from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills on July 4, 1828. That occasion was honored by an old-time celebration in which the chief figure was Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, who laid the first stone of the new line. After his services were finished he said to a friend: "I consider this among the most important things of my life, second only to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, if even it be second to that." Of that act President Hadley, of Yale, has written: "One man's life formed the connecting link between the political revolution of the one century and the industrial revolution of the other." No sooner had actual construction begun on the new line, than the directors found themselves beset by many difficulties. Their enterprise was then so unusual, that they went blindly, stumbling ahead in the dark. Even the construction of the track itself was experimental. It was first planned to use wooden rails hewn from oak, and these were to be mounted upon stone sleepers set in a rock ballast. The money spent in such track was obviously wasted. All such construction had to be torn out before the traffic was at all sizable, and replaced by iron rails and wooden sleepers. But the track was the least of the company's problems. It had gone ahead to build a railroad with a very vague conception as to its permanent motive-power. It was soon seen there, too, that horses were out of the question for hauling the passengers and freight any considerable distance. The Baltimore & Ohio Company gravely experimented at one time with a car which was carried before the wind by means of mast and sail. Sturdy old Peter Cooper, of New York, finally solved that motive-power problem. He had been induced to buy three thousand acres of land in the outskirts of Baltimore for speculation. Requests sent by his Baltimore partners for remittances, for taxes and other charges, became so frequent that he went to the Maryland city to investigate. One glance showed him that the future of his investment rested upon the future of the struggling little railroad which was trying to poke its nose west from Baltimore. He came to the aid of its directors in their problem of motive-power.