f Chillicothe had the honor of wheeling it away and dumping it over a
bank. He was the captain of a company of militia, and the crowd was so
great that a squadron of cavalry had to keep a space for the speakers
in the midst of their hollow square. Thomas Ewing delivered the oration,
and men all round him wept for joy.

[Illustration: Governor Clinton 211L]

There were like scenes when the canals were completed. Multitudes
gathered to see the water let into the channels which to their
impatience had been so long in digging, and they took hopefully the
disappointment of having it sink into the gravelly beds, before it could
slowly fill the banks, instead of rushing like a flood to their brims.
At Dayton, 1829, when the first fleet of three canal boats arrived from
Cincinnati, it was greeted with the firing of cannon and the shouts of
an immense crowd lining the canal banks. This was as it should be, and
will be wherever a great work is done for the common good; and it ought
never to be forgotten that the canals of Ohio were dug by Ohio men that
all Ohio men might freely prosper more and more, and not that a few rich
men might get richer.

After the National Road, which was our first way out, came the steam
navigation of the lake and the river, and after that came the railroad,
which will be our main reliance for getting back and forth over the
state and to and from it, till some of the many schemes of travel
through the air are realized. We cannot tell how far off the event may
be; but in the mean time it is curious, if not very flattering to our
Ohio pride, to learn that the first railroad enterprise within our
borders was fostered by Michigan. The legislature of that state granted
the charter of the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad, which opened in 1836.
The line ran from Toledo to Adrian, thirty-three miles, but when it was
projected the matter was so far from serious with the legislature which
authorized it, that it was granted because it was "merely a fanciful
scheme that could do no harm, and would greatly please" certain citizens
of Toledo; just as now a balloon line might be laughingly authorized. It
was entirely successful, however, as far as the running was concerned,
though the road was so hampered by the cost of fighting enemies and the
expenses of building that it was seized for debt seven years later.

This has been the history of many railroads since in Ohio, and if we
could read between the lines that now co