In February, 1808, Mr. Joshua Forman, a member of the Legislature from Onondaga, and subsequently one of the efficient promoters of the canal, proposed the appointment of a joint committee “to take into consideration the propriety of exploring and causing an accurate survey to be made of the most eligible and direct route for a canal to open a communication between the tide-waters of the Hudson river and Lake Erie.” On the 21st of March, 1808, Mr. Gold, of the committee, made a report, enlarging upon the importance of the proposed work, “in drawing together and preserving in political concord the distant parts of a widely extended empire,” and closed with a resolution that the Surveyor-General cause an accurate survey to be made of the rivers, streams, and waters in the usual route of communication between the Hudson river and the western waters, and such other contemplated routes as he may deem proper. For such survey the sum of 600 dollars was appropriated. The action under the resolution of Mr. Forman was the first step taken by the Legislature with a view to the construction of the Erie Canal. In 1810 commissioners were appointed to examine the route of the proposed canal. In 1811 the commission reported in favour of a canal, which, in order to produce the inclination of six inches to the mile to Schenectady was to cross the Genesee river by a viaduct 83 feet above the water, and the outlet of Cuyaga Lake at an elevation of 130 feet. In 1812 the commission made an estimate of the probable tonnage that would come upon the canal, and of the tolls that would accrue therefrom. They expressed their opinion that not improbably the canal, in twenty years from that time, would bring down 200,000 tons of traffic![110] In 1817, the Act for the construction of the Erie Canal was finally passed. The money was to be raised on the credit of the State. In 1825 the canal with its adjuncts was completed. The latter event was signalised by a holiday, and unusual rejoicings. It was regarded as a great thing that the news of the opening of the canal was conveyed to New York from Buffalo, by a discharge of cannon, whose reverberations were repeated along a line of 513 miles in one hour and twenty minutes. The communication which the Erie Canal afforded between the vast inland seas of the United States and the Atlantic Ocean was, indeed, the greatest event in the history of transportation in that country up to the end of the first quarter of our century.