of quarreling now ensued, and the contest, though it may not have
seriously delayed either enterprise, aroused much bitterness and
involved the usual train of lawsuits and injunctions.

In 1833 the canal company yielded the railroad a right of way
through the Point of Rocks--the Potomac chasm through the Blue
Ridge wall, just below Harper's Ferry on condition that the
railroad should not build beyond Harper's Ferry until the canal
was completed to Cumberland. But probably nothing but the
financial helplessness of the canal company could have brought a
solution satisfactory to all concerned. A settlement of the long
quarrel by compromise was the price paid for state aid, and, in
1835 Maryland subsidized to a large degree both canal and
railroad by her famous eight million dollar bill. The railroad
received three millions from the State, and the city of Baltimore
was permitted to subscribe an equal amount of stock. With this
support and a free right of way, the railroad pushed on up the
Potomac. Though delayed by the financial disasters of 1837, in
1842 it was at Hancock; in 1851, at Piedmont; in 1852, at
Fairmont; and the next year it reached the Ohio River at
Wheeling.

Spurred by the enterprise shown by these Southerners,
Pennsylvania and New York now took immediate steps to parallel
their own canals by railways. The line of the Union Canal in
Pennsylvania was paralleled by a railroad in 1834, the same year
in which the Allegheny Portage Railway was constructed. New York
lines reached Buffalo in 1842. The Pennsylvania Railroad, which
was incorporated in 1846, was completed to Pittsburgh in 1854.