At this answer the _Young Lion_ gave way, guns were fired, and amid the cheers of the great crowd the flotilla of boats, with Governor Clinton, Lieutenant-Governor Talmadge, and other distinguished men on deck, floated into the spacious basin at the end of the aqueduct. The customary procession and address of welcome were followed by a grand ball and illumination, and the flotilla, increased by the _Young Lion of the West_ with several Rochester gentlemen on board, proceeded. At Rome, on the 30th of October, the first sign of unfriendliness was encountered. The inhabitants of that place were dissatisfied because the canal did not follow the line of the old waterway laid out by the Western Inland Locks Navigation Company, upon which the village of Rome had been built. On the day when the group of boats left Buffalo, the citizens of Rome had held a solemn mourning assembly, and had marched with muffled drums from the old canal to the new, bearing with them a barrel of water from the old which they emptied into the new. Even this mournful occasion had been closed with an appropriate celebration and feast at the hotel, but no warm welcome greeted the travellers on the thirtieth. At Schenectady rain and a spirit of marked opposition met them because it was believed that the Erie Canal would be the ruin of the town. Hitherto it had been the terminus of the Mohawk River route and of the western stage and wagon lines. The opening of a direct water route to Albany would be fatal to all these interests. Only the students of Union College broke through the general disapproval, and did the honors of the town in the pouring rain. That afternoon, November 2, the boats entered the last lock at Albany, and were greeted by a welcoming salute of twenty-four cannon, followed by appropriate ceremonies. From Albany the canal-boats were towed down the Hudson by steamer to New York, where great celebrations had been prepared. “Never before,” writes an enthusiastic onlooker, “was there such a fleet collected and so superbly decorated; and it is very possible that a display so grand, so beautiful, and we may even add, sublime, will never again be witnessed.”