1856.] First Trijo made hy Locomotive, 79 



General, and Legislature, of all the officers of the government, of the 

 clergy and laity, and of hundreds of private individuals, in this beau- 

 tiful and picturesque city. I claim for my reward the gratification I can 

 not but feel with an intensity which I can scarcely find words to express, 

 that the favorite dream of three and twenty years of my life, whose 

 realization I have cherished day and night: to wit, that universal 

 humanity is to be bound in a true and social fraternity by instantaneous 

 intercommunication of thought, is now near its consummation." 

 A similar interest attaches, too, in relation to the 



FIRST TRIP MADE BY LOCOIMOTIVE. 



For when, with earth-vibrating tread, there looms up before us that 

 modern Megatherium of labor, the Steam Engine, it is not in the nature 

 of man, however familiar with its exploits, to pass it by, without amaze- 

 ment, and wondering what intrepid mortal first dared to bridle its power, 

 to mount and spur the shrieking demon along its iron race-course? The 

 answer to that question, which our children's children will ask, is given 

 as follows by a Xcw York paper. 



" Major Horatio Allen, the Engineer of the Xew-York and Erie Eail 

 Eoad, in a speech, made during a recent festival occasion, gave the fol- 

 lowing account of the first trip made by a locomotive on this continent. 



When was it ? How was it ? And who awakened its energies and 

 directed its movements? 'It was in the year 1828, said Major Allen, 

 on the banks of the Lackawaxen, at the commencement of the railroad 

 connecting the canal of the Hudson and Delaware C^al Company with 

 their coal mines ; and he who addresses you was the only person on that 

 locomotive. Ihe circumstances which led to my being alone on the 

 engine were these: The road had been built in the summer, the struc- 

 ture was of hemlock timber, and rails of large dimensions notched on 

 caps placed far apart. The timber had cracked and warped from expo- 

 sure to the sun. After about three hundred feet of straight line the 

 road crossed the Lackawaxen creek, on trestle work, about thirty feet 

 high, with a curve of tliree hundred and fifty to four hundred feet radius. 

 The impression was very general that this iron raonster would either 

 break down the road, or that it would leave the track at the curve and 

 plunge into the creek. My reply to such apprehensions was, that it was 

 too late to consider the probabilities of such occurrences, that there was 

 no other course but to have a trial made of the strange animal which 

 had been brought here at great expense, but that it was not necessary 

 that more than one should be involved in its fate; that I would take the 



