eted at Black Rock (Buffalo) in August, 1818, plied successfully
as far as Mackinac Island until her destruction three years later. Her
engines were then inherited by the Superior of stronger build, and with
the launching of such boats as the Niagara, the Henry Clay, and the
Pioneer, the fleet builders of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit proved
themselves not unworthy fellow-countrymen of the old seafarers of Salem
and Philadelphia.

But how were cargoes to reach these vessels from the vast regions
beyond the Great Lakes? Those thousands of settlers who poured into the
Northwest had cargoes ready to fill every manner of craft in so short
a space of time that it seems as if they must have resorted to arts
of necromancy. It was not magic, however, but perseverance that had
triumphed. The story of the creating of the main lakeward-reaching
canals is long and involved. A period of agitation and campaigning
preceded every such undertaking; and when construction was once begun,
financial woes usually brought disappointing delays. When a canal was
completed after many vicissitudes and doubts, traffic overwhelmed every
method provided to handle it: locks proved altogether too small; boats
were inadequate; wharfs became congested; blockades which occurred at
locks entailed long delay. In the end only lines and double lines
of steel rails could solve the problem of rapid and adequate
transportation, but the story of the railroad builders is told
elsewhere. *

* See "The Railroad Builders," by John Moody (in "The Chronicles
of America").

Ohio and Illinois caught the canal fever even before the Erie Canal
was completed, and the Ohio Canal and the Illinois-Michigan Canal
saw preliminary surveying done in 1822 and 1824 respectively. Ohio
particularly had cause to seek a northern outlet to Eastern markets by
way of Lake Erie. The valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami rivers
were producing wheat in large quantities as early as 1802, when Ohio was
admitted to the Union. Flour which brought $3.50 a barrel in Cincinnati
was worth $8 in New York. There were difficulties in the way of
transportation. Sometimes ice prevented produce and merchandise from
descending the Ohio to Cincinnati. At other times merchants of that city
had as many as a hundred thousand barrels awaiting a rise in the
river which would make it possible for boats to go over the falls at
Louisville. As these conditions involved a delay which often seemed