INTRODUCTION. 
101 
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 Holley 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. 
