The New York herald., 1922-05-07
The Restoration of Canal Travel.

Passenger traffic on the canals, a
necessity with many travellers of the
middle of the last century, is to re-
turn as a pleasure for summer vaca-
tionists and tourists, according to an
announcement of the Department of
Public Works al Albany. Superinten-
dent CHARLES l.. CADLE says that a
boat line is to be operated on the
new barge canal with comfortably
fitted boats not drawn by the mules
or horses of tradition but propelled
through the picturesque Mohawk
Valley by high power engines at the
rate of eight miles an hour.
Canal boat travel was feature of
American passenger transportation
in the '40s and sos. Its main lines
were the canals across New Jersey,
the route through Pennsylvania by
which CHARLES DICKENS went west
from Harrisburg to the Allegheny
Mountains, the artificial waterways
of Ohio and the Erie Canal. The last
named was the most important; it
formed link between the Hudson on
the east and Lake Erieand the Wabash
Canal on the west by which internal
communication was established be-
tween New York city and far dis
tant Lafayette, Indiana. The prize
craft of this early interstate line was
the packet boat Indiana, and its ar
rival at Fort Wayne from the east
was celebrated by public concert at
the landing and demonstrations of
welcome to the passengers.
An old lithograph Of the Erie
Canal pictures passengers sitting on
the deck of a canal boat basking in
the sunlight. There is peace and
loveliness in the valley landscape,
and an expression of serene happi-
ness and enjoyment is on the faces OF
the well dressed men and women.
But that apparently was not always
the state of mind of the canal traveller.
SEYMOUR DUNBAR in his History Of
Travel in America" says that most of
the contemporary descriptions of
packet trips were condensed into a
paragraph or two "as though the
travellers preferred to forget their ex-
periences as soon as possible rather
than revive their memories through
the process of telling them"
HORACE GREELEY made a trip on an
Erie Canal line boat from Albany to
Buffalo and years afterward he
wrote: 81 say nothing about the
good old times but IL any one would
recall the good old line boats, OBJ
ject." A days travel was, from his
account, about thirty-six miles and
it cost fifty-four cents. The days
passed slowly and smoothly, en-
livened by sedentary games, but the
nights were tedious. AT daybreak
you were routed out Of the shabby
shelflike berth and driven on deck
to swallow fog while the cabin was
cleared of beds and made ready for
breakfast"
CHARLES DICKENS too had some
thing to say of the berth which he
had in his canal boat travel. He
found by actual measurements that
IL was just the width of sheet of
post letter paper" and he was un-
certain as to the best means of get
ting into it. He was much disturbed
too in looking upward to see that
there was very heavy man i'm the
berth above him which the slender
cords seemed incapable of holding.
II could not help rejecting upon the
grief of my wife and family" he
wrote, "in the event of his coming
down in the night"
An Englishman named BEsTE, and
his family, who made the journey
eastward perhaps in the famous In