25,
was finished in 1843, and the Wabash and Erie, between Evansville and
Toledo, opened in 1851; but the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts was, in
1853, abandoned and filled up from the loss of its business to
railroads. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased from the
State the canal and railway line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and
soon after extended the railway portion to cover the whole. A traveller
from Boston to the West could get to Rochester by rail in 1841. Next
year he could go on to Buffalo by the same means. In 1842, Augusta, Ga.,
was connected by rail with Atlanta, Savannah with Macon, and the Boston
& Maine Railway finished to Berwick.

[Illustration: The New Iron Towers of the Niagara Bridge.]

The first railway out of Chicago--it was the first in Illinois--was
built in 1850, to Elgin. Chicago had no railway connection with the East
till two years later, when the Michigan Southern was opened. The
Michigan Central was finished soon after the Southern, and the Rock
Island before the end of the year. The Michigan Central had direct
connection east across Canada to Niagara Falls by 1854. In 1856 the
Burlington route reached the Mississippi and the Rock Island went on to
Iowa City. This year witnessed the opening of the first railroad in
California--from Sacramento to Folsom. In 1857 Chicago and St. Louis
were joined by rails, as also the latter city with Baltimore, over the
Parkersburg branch of the Baltimore & Ohio.

[Illustration: Three story frame building; first floor is shops.]
Birthplace of S. F. B. Morse, at Charlestown, Mass. Built 1775.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
S. F. B. Morse.

We now come to an improvement of which the preceding period knew
nothing, the magnetic telegraph, introduced by Professor Morse in 1844.
In this year Morse secured a congressional appropriation of $30,000 for
a line from Washington to Baltimore. The wires were at first encased in
tubes underground. In spite of the success of the project, further
governmental patronage was refused, the Postmaster-General advising
against it under the conviction that the invention could not become
practically valuable. Morse appealed for aid from private capitalists.
Ezra Cornell, of New York, soon opened a short line in Boston for
exhibition, following this with a similar enterprise in New York City.
The admission fee was twelve and a half cents. Few cared to pay even
this trifle, so that the undertaking was har