The author within these pages has endeavored to put plain fact plainly. He has written without malice--if anything, he still feels within his heart a burst of warm sentiment for the old R. W. & O.--and with every effort toward absolute impartiality in setting down these events that now are History. He bespeaks for his little book, kindness, consideration, even forbearance. And looks forward to the day when again he may take up his pen in the scribbling of another narrative such as this. It has been a task. But it has been a task of real fascination. E. H. A LIST OF THOSE WHO HAVE ASSISTED MATERIALLY IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS BOOK RICHARD C. ELLSWORTH Canton HAROLD B. JOHNSON Watertown CORNELIUS CHRISTIE Syracuse RICHARD HOLDEN Watertown J. F. MAYNARD Utica DR. CHARLES H. LEETE Potsdam W. D. HANCHETTE Watertown RICHARD T. STARSMEARE Kane, Pa. W. D. CARNES Watertown ARTHUR G. LEONARD Chicago ROBERT WARD DAVIS Rochester GEORGE W. KNOWLTON Watertown L. S. HUNGERFORD Chicago HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW New York ELISHA B. POWELL Oswego P. E. CROWLEY New York IRA A. PLACE New York F. E. MCCORMACK Corning EDGAR VAN ETTEN Los Angeles D. C. MOON Cleveland JAMES H. HUSTIS Boston F. W. THOMPSON San Francisco HENRY N. ROCKWELL Albany CHAS. H. HUNGERFORD Arlington, Vt. CHARLES HOLCOMBE Biloxi, Miss. CHAPTER I BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION In the late summer of 1836 the locomotive first reached Utica and a new era in the development of Central and Northern New York was begun. For forty years before that time, however--in fact ever since the close of the War of the Revolution--there had been a steady and increasing trek of settlers into the heart of what was soon destined to become the richest as well as the most populous state of the Union. But its development was constantly retarded by the lack of proper transportation facilities. For while the valley of the Mohawk, the gradual portage just west of Rome and the way down to Oswego and Lake Ontario through Oneida Lake and its emptying waterways, formed the one natural passage in the whole United States of that day from the Atlantic seaboard to the Great Lakes and the little-known country beyond, it was by no means an easy pathway. Not even after the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company had builded its first crude masonry locks in the narrow natural _impasse_ at Little Falls, so that the _bateaux_ of the early settlers, which made the rest of the route in comparative ease, might pass through its one very difficult bottle-neck.