The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1896-05-02
BY PACKET ON THE ERIE CANAL
How Our Grandfathers Travelled il
the Coed Old Days.
When the Boats Arrival Was an Event in
the Interior City, and All the Town
Was Interested.
Fom the Utica Observer. }

(Fon the Utica Observer
Those were great days for the boys of
Utica when Commodore Hiram Green
man and Capt. Potter and Capt. Myers
use to run on the packets on the Erie
canal through Utica. Tho arrivals in
the mornings and afternoons were
events. How gaily the three horses, har-
messed tandem, used to bring the packets
up to the dock just east Of Geneses street
bridge, the bridge quickly filing with
onlookers, all the passengers on deck,
perhaps music playing and everybody
Interested. And the departures were
not less interesting. The steersman was
the most admired man of his day, and he
knew it. The man who poied the bow Of
the boat away from the dock as the tow
line was Strengthened out by the trotting
steeds was not unnoticed but he was
not the equal Of the stesrsman by long
shot. We can point out gray headed
men who where then boys filled with q
fervent longing to arrive at an equal
dignity of station when they should be
older.
Prior to the completion of the railroad
which had umerous rests in Its con-
struction before the entire stretch of
"strap- rails" was laid across the state
son. to distant Buffalo on the Erie-the
.'big ditch had boon completed, and
these two cities connected by this unique
water way, the wonder Of the time, the
pride of the state and nation, and a re-
inarkable object lesson for this worlds
admiration of the enterprise and en-
gineeri ng skill of the Amarican people.
In these later days, when invention
has supplid the powerful appliances for
saving labor and for facilitating the work
on such great undertakings one is apt to
Underestimate the toll and patience
which this vast work implies, under such
wearing conditions, when pick and shoy-
ell had not been supplanted by the
steamshovel "that interIoper" which Pat
polite. while consoling himself that "tbe
blaokguard couldn't vote, anyhow; and
when the work of weeks could not effect
what could now be done in days.
Until the completion OF tho canal "the
stage coach and four" was the only pub
lilo means of transit over most of the dis
tance. And the srarions and comfort
able packet boat was hailed with genuine
satisfaction, aad deemed q great advance
in tie manner of travel and traffic.
The new and improved steel boats,
propellet by electricity or steam, cannot
IMPRESS the people of TO-DAY as did the
white packets as they gl'ded along the
tortuous waterways, drawn by two
horses, attached to a rops stretching
100 feet in advance And it is doubtful
if tn luxurious appointments of mod
ern steamer ara cor ducive to greater con.
TT than they enioyed who took passage
in a line packet go years ago through the
Y lrif country anu towns, small or
great, (albbouah the latter term would
scarcely apply to any city on the line at
that dafe.)
Where winding among swelling hills,
across stretches of verdant plain or Willis
locked through rugged and rocky cliffs.
the Genes were ever varying ard f"ar~
with interest and novelty. Did theig