No. 144.] 241 



it by the then great question of a canal from the lakes to the 

 ocean, I studied the history of roads — the tram road being the 

 first grand improvement after the Appian way, the common paved 

 road, and the McAdamized roads. More than 100 years had 

 passed away since man first saw a good iron way, but not the 

 first steam carriage. 



In the Legislature of New-York, in 1818, I first publicly 

 asserted the reality of steam drivers of cars on a long iron rail- 

 road, with an average velocity of fifteen miles an hour ! curves 

 rendering it necessary to move slower. In 1850, the average 

 velocity of the railroad between New-York and Philadelphia, 

 owing to curves, &c., has not exceeded sixteen miles an hour, so 

 that njy theoretical velocity, as declared in the Assembly Cham- 

 ber, in 1818, was right within one sixteenth part of the real prac- 

 tical velocity, at the distance of thirty-two years. The same had 

 been vv^ritten by me and published in the National Advocate, in 

 1816, when M. M. Noah was editor. He prefaced my article 

 (which was signed M.) by saying that there might be something 

 in it, but to him the author seemed to be a Don Quixote. Such 

 was the opinion upon railroads 38 years ago. 



I have, with others, admired the progress made in velocity on 

 railroads up to even one hundred miles an hour, on straight roadsj 

 which has been done in England. But I entertain views of rail- 

 road velocity far beyond any yet ventured to be expressed. The 

 Emperor of Russia has taken the first great step toward what I 

 deem the ultimatum of railroad travel. 



Instead of cutting a narrow alley through the country, or going 

 around everything in the way of a straight line, he has cut a 

 broad way, 500 miles from Petersburgh to Moscow; he has made 

 it all the way two hundred feet wide, so that the engineer sees 

 everything that comes on the road ! 



Such is part of the future; the railroad from point to point a 

 mathematical line; the rails ten times stronger than any now used; 

 the locomotives on wheels of far greater diameter, say twelve or 

 fifteen feet; the guage of a relative breadth; the signals and 



[Assembly No. 144.] P 



