and built her Erie Canal, which soon turned doubt and derision into a vast tumult of applause. Yet it must be remembered that the New York canal had an easy path to follow. The Mohawk was not the wild Potomac as known in bleak Hampshire County, nor Wood Creek the racing Conemaugh or upper Youghiogheny. The wet flats of the "Genesee Country" offered a different prospect for canal engineers from that to be viewed in Kittanning Gorge where only the eagles lived. The Erie Canal conquered, by means of locks, 500 feet in 360 miles; the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal faced the problem of overcoming 2754 feet in 340 miles, and the Pennsylvania Canal, 2291 feet in 320 miles. It is not to be wondered at, then, that New York found a water connection with the West first. And yet the fact remains that much was spent on the Mohawk before the Erie Canal was begun.
So the struggle went on in Pennsylvania for nearly a generation until at last the success of the Erie Canal and the failure of the improved unnavigable rivers gave birth
