direction. And not only was it an
important coaching rendezvous but as it was also a leading commercial
tributary of New York the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad had built a short
track between Albany and Schenectady and supplied it with cars propelled
by horse power. Now in 1831 the company decided to transform this road
into a steam railroad and to this end ordered a steam locomotive called
the 'DeWitt Clinton' to be constructed at West Point with the aim of
demonstrating to the northern States the advantages of steam
transportation. You can imagine the excitement this announcement caused.
Think, if you had never seen a steam engine, how eager you would be to
behold the wonder. These olden time New Yorkers felt precisely the same
way. Although the route was only sixteen miles long the innovation was
such a novel and tremendous one that all along the way crowds of
spectators assembled to watch the passing of the magic train. At the
starting point near the Hudson there was a dense throng of curious
onlookers who gathered to see for the first time in all their lives the
steam locomotive and its brigade of coaches,--for in those days people
never spoke of a train of cars; a group of railroad carriages was always
known as a brigade, and the term _coach_ was, and in many cases still is
applied to the cars. This train that created so much interest was
practically like Stephenson's English trains, being made up of a small
locomotive, a tender, and two carriages constructed by fastening
stagecoach bodies on top of railroad trucks. Stout iron chains held
these vehicles together--a primitive, and as it subsequently proved, a
very impractical method of coupling."

"It must have been a funny enough train!" Steve exclaimed.

"I doubt if it appeared so to the people of that time," his father
returned, "for since the audience of that period had nothing with which
to compare it, it probably seemed quite the ordinary thing. Was it not
like the railroad trains used in England? How was America to know
anything different? Yes, I am sure the 'DeWitt Clinton' was considered a
very grand affair indeed, even though it was only a small engine without
a cab, and had barely enough platform for the engineer to stand upon
while he drove the engine and fed the pitch-pine logs into the furnace."

"How many people did the train hold?" inquired Steve, with growing
curiosity.

"Each coach carried six persons inside and two outside," was Mr.
Tolman's re