318 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



this place over the Erie Railroad! Ah! and think too 

 what is very likely to be the case a few years hence! 

 Beef and mutton will not only be fatted upon these rich 

 lands, but the slaughter houses of the city will be here 

 also, and the animals killed, as they always should be, 

 where they are fed; when the facilities are as good for 

 sending the meat to market, that if butchered in the after- 

 noon, and hung up in cars constructed on purpose, with 

 wire gauze windows, it would be in market next morn- 

 ing in fine order, and far better than when the poor 

 beasts are driven or transported alive. It appears to 

 me to be one of the grossest pieces of folly, in our time, 

 to continue to butcher animals within the city. Look at 

 the amount of offal to be carried out again. The hides, 

 too, are sent back over the same route to the tanner. 



But I am off the track. Yet these things are all so 

 intimately blended with the railroad that I can but speak 

 of them. The road is now completed 260 miles, to El- 

 mira, and in a few weeks a branch will be completed 

 from there to Seneca Lake, and a large and good steam- 

 boat running all the year, (that lake never freezes,) to 

 Geneva. Another branch is nearly ready between Owego 

 and Ithaca — 29 miles — and through Cayuga Lake, thus 

 uniting, by either of these routes, with the northern rail- 

 roads. Even now the amount of travel upon the road is 

 enormous, but when the branches are open, it will be 

 greatly increased ; and when it is finally terminated upon 

 Lake Erie, it will exceed any other work, perhaps, in the 

 world, in the magnificent manner it is constructed, and 

 in its continual length and incalculable business. It is 

 worth a journey of a thousand miles in addition, to wit- 

 ness the surprisingly beautiful scenery of the country 

 through which this road passes. 



I visited several farms in the Susquehanna Valley, of 

 which I shall speak hereafter. Solon Robinson. 



Netv York, October 21th, 1849. 



