INTRODUCTION. IM 



Elmendorf, Chauncey Loomis, Peter H. Radcliff, William Ross, Henry Seymour, 

 Samuel Stewart, Philetus Swift, Martin Van Buren, Abraham Van Vechten, Sa- 

 muel Verbryck and Gerrit Wendell. Those who voted against the bill were 

 James Cochran, Darius Crosby, Jonathan Dayton, Parley Keyes, Peter R. Living- 

 ston and David Ogden. The bill received the concurrence of the assembly, and 

 became a law, after an ineffectual effort to induce the senate to recede from their 

 amendments. 



The commissioners selected De Witt Clinton to be their president, and ap- 

 pointed Samuel Young their secretary, and Myron HoUey their treasurer ; divided 

 the canal route into three sections, middle, eastern and western, and appointed 

 engineers for each section. In 1817 they made a detailed report of the survey. 

 They estimated the cost of the Erie canal at four million five hundred and 

 seventy-one thousand eight hundred and thirteen dollars, and showed that its 

 entire length would be three hundred and fifty-three miles ; that the surface of 

 Lake Erie was five hundred and sixty-four feet higher than the Hudson, and 

 one hundred and forty-five feet higher than Rome ; and that the aggregate rise 

 and fall would be six hundred and sixty-one feet, which would require the con- 

 struction of seventy-seven locks. The dimensions of the canal, as established, 

 were forty feet width at the surface, twenty-eight feet at the bottom, and four 

 feet depth. 



The commissioners, although they spoke discouragingly, did not yet relinquish 

 the hope of aid from the federal government, and from sister states; and they 

 recorded the enlightened and generous resolution of Ohio, to aid as far as her 

 resources would justify, in the construction of a work, the advantages of which to 

 herself and to the union she so clearly discerned. The commissioners further 

 reported, that although they had not accurate information, they had no doubt 

 that loans of money sufficient for the construction of the work could be obtained, 

 and that ample funds could be commanded for the payment of interest and the 

 extinguishment of the debt, without taxation. 



