to see the engine released,
long after us, come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back
of green and gold so shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of
wings and soared away, no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for
the least surprise. But it stopped short of us in a very business-like
manner when we reached the canal; and, before we left the wharf, went
panting up this hill again, with the passengers who had waited our
arrival for the means of traversing the road by which we had come." *

* Op. cit.

This Pennsylvania route was likewise famous because it included the
first tunnel in America; but with the advance of years, tunnel, planes,
and canal were supplanted by what was to become in time the Pennsylvania
Railroad, the pride of the State and one of the great highways of the
nation.

In the year before Pennsylvania investigated her western water route,
a joint bill was introduced into the legislatures of the Potomac Valley
States, proposing a Potomac Canal Company which should construct a
Chesapeake and Ohio canal at the expense of Maryland, Virginia, and the
District of Columbia. The plan was of vital moment to Alexandria and
Georgetown on the Potomac, but unless a lateral canal could be built to
Baltimore, that city--which paid a third of Maryland's taxes--would be
called on to supply a great sum to benefit only her chief rivals. The
bitter struggle which now developed is one of the most significant in
commercial history because of its sequel.

The conditions underlying this rivalry must not be lost sight of.
Baltimore had done more than any other Eastern city to ally herself with
the West and to obtain its trade. She had instinctively responded
to every move made by her rivals in the great game. If Pennsylvania
promoted a Lancaster Turnpike, Baltimore threw out her superb
Baltimore-Reisterstown boulevard, though her northern road to
Philadelphia remained the slough that Brissot and Baily had found it. If
New York projected an Erie Canal, Baltimore successfully championed the
building of a Cumberland Road by a governmental godmother. So thoroughly
and quickly, indeed, did she link her system of stone roads to that
great artery, that even today many well-informed writers seem to be
under the impression that the Cumberland Road ran from the Ohio to
Washington and Baltimore. Now, with canals building to the north of her
and canals to the south of her, what of her prestige and