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XV

AILROADS were now all the rage. And at about this time the greatest railroad in the world, for its day, was finished, "The New York & Lake Erie." It was called, for short, the "Erie. I was soon to make a bag of money out of this Erie Road. So I came to know a good deal about it. The road had been a long time a-building. Young Pierson, of Ramapo, well-nigh lost his fortune in the job. If it hadn't been for English investors coming forward and buying the stock at a time when Americans had got sick of the thing, it would have fallen flat as a pancake and there wouldn't have been any Erie Road at all. Pierson had worked like everything to get the Legislature to give a subsidy. In this he was backed by the southern tier of counties in York State. Those counties for a long time had felt sore that the Erie Canal had not been built through their section rather than through the Mohawk section. And they put up such a howl that the Legislature had either to give them a canal of their own, or else build a railroad. Pierson he was the son of old Judge Pierson of Ramapo - pushed the thing

and got a grant of money from the Legislature. But this hadn't carried the road to completion. It hung fire. It was built only half-way to Lake Erie — was like a bridge thrown half-way across, about as much use as no bridge at all. The Legislature wouldn't grant any more money. Also American capital got cold feet. The thing looked bad. It was at this time that English investors came to the rescue. They put up their good money, bought the road's paper, helped the thing out. So that by and by a pair of rails was laid clean through to Dunkirk.

Then there was a great jubilee. All the people in that part of the state joined in the "Hurrah." They had been jealous of the Erie Canal section of York State. Now they could hold their heads up with any. Because, what is a canal with its poky old boats, compared to a railroad 500 miles long, with trains scooting over the rails like a streak of lightning! Thirty miles an hour now wasn't considered remarkable; soon the trains could keep up that speed the whole distance. To celebrate the completion of the road two trains of cars ran over the route. There were many invited guests - the President, Dan Webster, and lots of the other big wigs. It was in the spring of the year. When finally they got to Dunkirk at Lake Erie, they had a big barbecue. Under a tent were victuals for well-nigh a thousand people. Whole roast pigs

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and oxen were served on the tables. There was a great sign hung up, with poetry on it:

"'Tis done, 'tis done, the mighty chain,

That binds Lake Erie to the main."

The road first along ran to Piermont on the Hudson. They hadn't been able to get through the Bergen Hill, which lay just back of Jersey City. So had to go up to Piermont as the next best place of reaching the Hudson. Washington Irving's country seat was on the river on the opposite bank. He could look over and see the trains come down to the shore; for there was a pier a mile long that ran out into the water from Piermont. It had to be that long, because the Hudson is shallow at that point. (Right where Washington Irving had his estate was where the three patriot soldiers got Major André when he was trying to escape from West Point, during the treason of Benedict Arnold.) That place, Piermont, had formerly been a fishing village called Tappan Slote. The place had supported three fishing sloops. But now three steamboats took the place of the sloops. Great shops and engine-houses were built, and a switch-yard. Piermont a long pier running right into the mountain back on the shore; I suppose that's where the village got its new name became a boom town.

This plan of having the eastern terminal of the

road at Piermont had its drawbacks. It was twentyfour miles up the river from New York City. Steamboats could take care of the travel all right in summer. But in winter it was a different matter. In that day there wasn't so much traffic in New York Bay and on the North River as there is now. So that in a cold winter the floating ice, not having anything to break it up, used to jam, and freeze solid from shore to shore. The Erie Railroad boats to Piermont in winter had to have a channel cut for them through the ice. Sometimes they had hard work keeping even this open. The channel would sometimes get so narrow that the boat could just skimp through. Skaters on the ice would come alongside and jump onto the guard-rail of the steamboat, or onto the false prow.

However, in spite of this difficulty the railroad did well almost from the start. For one thing, the people living alongside were so proud of the thing that they pitched in and helped it in every way they could. They looked upon the Erie Road as a patriotic achievement. Because people as far away as Europe were talking about this wonderful engineering feat that America had put through. More than that, the road ran through a prosperous region. From Rockland to Chautauqua, there were rich farm lands on both sides. It tapped the Delaware and Hudson Canal at Port Jervis. Branch lines quickly spread out on both sides and served

as feeders. The grazing lands of Sullivan, Delaware and Broome Counties now had a way of getting their stuff to market. The road paid good dividends.

I had kept my eye on the road while it was a-building. Because I knew something of the country it went through. My Western cattle trips had made me acquainted with Ohio and the great region west, which this road was now to lead into. And my shorter drover trips out from New York had made me more or less at home in those counties that the Erie Road passed through. I knew that that southern York State country was a rich one. It had been peopled for a long time back. During the Revolution those southern counties had been an important section of the state. The Tuxedo Gap through the Ramapo Mountains was, in General George Washington's day, the only road between New York and the western counties. (I knew a whole lot about that Ramapo section. When a man travels through a country on horseback, with a drove of three or four hundred critters a-plodding along behind him, and pitching camp at nightfall whereever he happens to be, he picks up a sight more information about a locality than you can get out of books.) That is why General George Washington fortified the Tuxedo Gap when he was looking for the red-coats to advance from New York City and New Jersey. He knew that that was the only pass by which they could get through, and he wanted