The opening up of the Venango oil-district in Pennsylvania in 1858 brought to Cleveland a large refining and shipping industry, for which it was well fitted by its advantageous position on the lake and its railroads and vessels. Two months later a similar occasion took place in the little village of Dunkirk, Pennsylvania, when the New York and Erie road was completed. This line crossed the state of New York some seventy miles south of the Albany turnpike and New York Central route, and with its completion the Great Lakes and the Atlantic were once more united and the occasion was celebrated as if such an idea had never entered the minds of any one before. President Fillmore and Daniel Webster, his Secretary of State, with three other members of the cabinet, came on from Washington and took the trip on the first train over the road. In New York City and all along the way there was great excitement, and in the little village of Dunkirk grand preparations had been going on for weeks. The train arrived at four-thirty on the afternoon of May 15. As it rolled into the station the church bells rang, cannon roared, and a salute of thirteen guns was fired from the United States steamship _Michigan_, which was stationed in the harbor. The cars passed under a canopy of French, American, and British flags, and beyond the engine at the very end of the track was an arch of evergreen and flowers built over an old plough on which was printed the word “Finis.” This was the plough used to break ground for the first ten-mile section of the road at Dunkirk in 1838. The distinguished visitors formed in a procession and marched about the town, to be welcomed by the mayor before they entered the huge shed erected for the occasion. Over the table, three hundred feet long, hung two barbecued oxen suspended on poles. Upon the table were ten sheep roasted whole. Bread had been baked in loaves ten feet long by two thick, which it took two men to carry. Even the pork and beans were in tin vessels holding fifty gallons each, and barrels of cider were set at intervals along the side of the table. The presidential party looked, admired, and praised--and then returned to the hotel for a collation, leaving the sampling of these triumphs of the culinary art to the other guests of the occasion.