charter granted in America.

We may not here undertake the story of the iron track, though it is
from this very road that such a story must take its departure, and
though we cannot grant that that story would be exceeded by any in
the range of the author's skill as a matter of popular interest. This
railroad, this "Baltimore and Ohio" artery, connects, through its
origin, with the very beginnings of modern progress, and indeed with
feudalism; for it was opened in 1828 by Charles Carroll, the patriot
who had staked his broad lands of Carrollton in 1776 against the
maintenance of feudalism in this country. "I consider this," said
Carroll, after his slender and aristocratic hand had relinquished the
spade, "among the most important acts of my life--second only to
my signing the Declaration of Independence." Railroads, excepting
coal-mine trams, were as yet untried; Stephenson had not yet exhibited
the Rocket; for travel and transportation the locomotive was unknown,
and the Baltimoreans conceived their scheme while yet uncertain
whether horse-power or _stationary_ steam-engines would be the
best acting force. It was opened as far as Ellicott's Mills as a
horse-road, the idlers and beauties of Baltimore participating in the
excursion as a novel jest. In 1830, Baron Krudener, the envoy from
Russia, rode upon it in a car with sails, called the Æolus, a model
of which he sent to the emperor Nicholas as something new and hopeful.
Passing the Monocacy, we roll over a rich champaign country, based
upon limestone--the garden of the State, and containing the ancient
manor of Carrollton, through whose grounds, by one of its branches,
this road passes for miles. Near by are quarries of Breccia marble--a
conglomerate of cemented variegated pebbles--out of which were cut
the rich pillars in the House of Representatives at Washington. The
Monocacy is crossed, near whose bank lies the bucolic old Maryland