314 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



at Swampscot, for the benefit of the large settlement of 

 fishermen there. With the assistance of a few other gen- 

 tlemen, whom he roused to action, a beautiful little 

 church has been erected, whither he and his excellent 

 wife go every Sabbath, with their children, to attend a 

 Sunday school ; thus giving his personal influence, as well 

 as the influence of wealth, to improve the condition of 

 his fellow men. May his days be long and happy. 



Solon Robinson. 

 Neiu York, Oct. 25th, 1849. 



Benefit of Railroads to Agriculture. 



[New York American Agriculturist, 9:58-59; Feb. 1850] 



[October 27, 1849] 



The Neiv-York and Erie Railroad. — Twenty-five years 

 ago, I left the city of New York to visit Binghamton. 

 Eight hours upon a steamboat of those days carried me to 

 Newburgh. Four days and nights, long, tedious toil in 

 a post coach, over that region of mud and mountains, 

 hills and hollows, and through vast, uncultivated forests, 

 opened to our sleepy senses the valley of the Susque- 

 hanna, rich in its native pines, and covered with a fer- 

 tile, uncultivated soil — for it had no market for the farm- 

 er's produce — no outlet for a surplus, except down the 

 long and dangerous voyage of a lumberman's raft to the 

 far, far away port of Baltimore. 



How the throng at Binghamton, gaped, open-mouthed, 

 around "the man from York," to hear his news "in ad- 

 vance of the mail," only four days old. Whoever then 

 thought of things to come? Who, dreaming, would have 

 dared tell his dream, that within less than a quarter of 

 a century, a locomotive should be seen thundering 

 through the little quiet village of Binghamton, with 

 thirty burthened cars, carrying 300 tons of freight; and 

 that this would come from New York, up and along the 

 Delaware, and over the intervening mountains, down into 

 this valley? Who then would have believed "the man 



