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York was similar to that projected for the Potomac
The system proposed for the improvement of the waterways of New
York was similar to that projected for the Potomac. A canal was
to be cut from the Mohawk to the Hudson in order to avoid Cohoes
Falls; a canal with locks would overcome the forty-foot drop at
Little Falls; another canal over five thousand feet in length was
to connect the Mohawk and Wood Creek at Rome; minor improvements
were to be made between Schenectady and the mouth of the
Schoharie; and finally the Oswego Falls at Rochester were to be
circumvented also by canal. All the objections, difficulties, and
discouragements which had attended efforts to improve waterways
elsewhere in America confronted these New York promoters. They
began in 1793 at Little Falls but were soon forced to cease owing
to the failure of funds. Under the encouraging spur of a state
subscription to two hundred shares of stock, they renewed their
efforts in 1794 but were again forced to abandon the work before
the year had passed. By November, 1795, however, they had
completed the canal and in thirty days had received toll to the
amount of about four hundred dollars.

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proud, carried with it a suggestion of amphibious strength that
made it both apt and figuratively accurate
The title ‘alligator-horse,’ of which Western rivermen were very
proud, carried with it a suggestion of amphibious strength that
made it both apt and figuratively accurate. On all the American
rivers, east and west, a lusty crew, collected from the waning
Indian trade and the disbanded pioneer armies, found work to its
taste in poling the long keel boats, ‘corralling’ the bulky
barges–that is, towing them by pulling on a line attached to the
shore–or steering the ‘broadhorns’ or flatboats that transported
the first heavy inland river cargoes. Like longshoremen of all
ages, the American riverman was as rough as the work which
calloused his hands and transformed his muscles into bands of
tempered steel. Like all men given to hard but intermittent
labor, he employed his intervals of leisure in coarse and brutal
recreation. Their roistering exploits, indeed, have made these
rivermen almost better known at play than at work. One of them,
the notorious Mike Fink, known as ‘the Snag’ on the Mississippi
and as the ‘Snapping Turtle’ on the Ohio, has left the record,
not that he could load a keel boat in a certain length of time,
or lift a barrel of whiskey with one arm, or that no tumultuous
current had ever compelled him to back water, but that he could
‘out-run, out-hop, out-jump, throw down, drag out, and lick any
man in the country,’ and that he was ‘a Salt River roarer.’

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