l in
about five minutes. It snatches folks away to some place and drops 'em.
I guess it must make their hair stand up and their teeth chatter."

"Does it hurt anybody?" Joe asked hopefully.

"Well, sir, if anybody wanted to be hurt and got in its way, I rather
guess he'd succeed purty well. It's powerful. Why, if a man was to ketch
hold of the tail of a locomotive, and hang on, it would jerk the toe
nails right off him."

Joe began to have great respect for locomotives.

Soon they came in view of the famous Erie Canal, hard by the road.
Through it the grain of the far West had just begun moving eastward in a
tide that was flowing from April to December. Big barges, drawn by mules
and horses on its shore, were cutting the still waters of the canal.
They stopped and looked at the barges and the long tow ropes and the
tugging animals.

"There is a real artificial river, hundreds o' miles long, handmade of
the best material, water tight, no snags or rocks or other
imperfections, durability guaranteed," said Samson. "It has made the
name of DeWitt Clinton known everywhere."

"I wonder what next!" Sarah exclaimed.

They met many teams and passed other movers going west, and some
prosperous farms on a road wider and smoother than any they had
traveled. They camped that night, close by the river, with a Connecticut
family on its way to Ohio with a great load of household furniture on
one wagon and seven children in another. There were merry hours for the
young, and pleasant visiting between the older folk that evening at the
fireside. There was much talk among the latter about the great Erie
Canal.

So they fared along through Canandaigua and across the Genesee to the
village of Rochester and on through Lewiston and up the Niagara River to
the Falls, and camped where they could see the great water flood and
hear its muffled thunder. . . .

"Children," said Samson, "I want you to take a good look at that. It's
the most wonderful thing in the world and maybe you'll never see it
again."

"The Indians used to think that the Great Spirit was in this river,"
said Sarah.

"Kind o' seems to me they were right," Samson remarked thoughtfully.
"Kind o' seems as if the great spirit of America was in that water. It
moves on in the way it wills and nothing can stop it. Everything in its
current goes along with it. . . ."

They had the lake view and its cool breeze on their way to Silver Creek,
Dunkirk and Erie, and a rough w