ies, were roads made of wooden
rails, or railed roads, over which heavy loads were drawn by horses. The
very first were private affairs, and not intended for carrying
passengers.[1]

[Footnote 1: The first was used in 1807 at Boston to carry earth from a
hilltop to a street that was being graded. The second was built near
Philadelphia in 1810, and ran from a stone quarry to a dock. It was in
use twenty-eight years. The third was built in 1826, and extended from
the granite quarries at Quincy, Mass., to the Neponset River, a distance
of three miles. The fourth was from the coal mines of Mauchchunk, Pa.,
to the Lehigh River, nine miles. The fifth was constructed in 1828 by
the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company to carry coal from the mines to
the canal.]

%318. Public Railroads.%--In 1825 John Stevens, who for ten years
past had been advocating steam railroads, built a circular road at
Hoboken to demonstrate the possibility of using such means of
locomotion. In 1823 Pennsylvania chartered a company to build a railroad
from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna. But it was not till 1827, when the
East was earnestly seeking for a rapid and cheap means of transportation
to the West, that railroads of great length and for public use were
undertaken. In that year the people of Massachusetts were so excited
over the opening of the Erie Canal that the legislature appointed a
commission and an engineer to select a line for a railroad to join
Boston and Albany.

At this time there was no such thing as a steam locomotive in use in the
United States. The first ever used here for practical purposes was built
in England and brought to New York city in 1829, and in August of that
year made a trial trip on the rails of the Delaware and Hudson Canal
Company. The experiment was a failure; and for several years horses were
the only motive power in use on the railroads. In 1830, however, the
South Carolina Railroad having finished six miles of its road, had a
locomotive built in New York city, and in January, 1831, placed it on
the tracks at Charleston. Another followed in February, and the era of
locomotive railroading in our country began.

%319. The Portage Railroad.%--As yet the locomotive was a rude
machine. It could not go faster than fifteen miles an hour, nor climb a
steep hill. Where such an obstacle was met with, either the road went
around it, or the locomotive was taken off and the cars were let down or
pulled up the hill on an in