the rolls twisted and as crooked as snakes," and he was greatly
discouraged. At last, however, the mill men acquired the art of
straightening the rail while it cooled.

The first shipment,[3] consisting of five hundred and fifty bars
eighteen feet long, thirty-six pounds to the yard, arrived in
Philadelphia on the ship Charlemagne, May 16, 1831.

Over thirty miles of this rail was laid before the summer of 1832.

A few years after, on much of the Stevens rail laid on the Camden and
Amboy Railroad, the rivets at the joints were discarded, and the bolt
with the screw thread and nut, similar to that now used, was adopted
as the standard.

The rail was first designed to weigh thirty-six pounds per yard, but
it was almost immediately increased in weight to between forty and
forty-two pounds, and rolled in lengths of sixteen feet. It was then
three and a half inches high, two and one-eighth inches wide on the
head and three and a half inches wide at the base, the price paid in
England being £8 per ton. The import duty was $1.85.

The first shipment of rail, having arrived in America, was transported
to Bordentown, and here, upon the ground on which we stand, and which
this monument is erected to mark forever, was laid the first piece of
track (about five-sixths of a mile long) in August, 1831. The Camden
and Amboy Company, following the example of the Manchester and
Liverpool Railroad, laid their first track upon stone blocks two feet
square and ten to thirteen inches deep. These blocks were purchased
from the prison authorities at Sing Sing, N.Y. Some of these stone