Handicaps of various sorts wore the patience of commissioners,
engineers, and contractors. Lack of snow during one winter all
but stopped the work by cutting off the source of supplies.
Pioneer ailments, such as fever and ague, reaped great harvests,
incapacitated more than a thousand workmen at one time and for a
brief while stopped work completely.

For the most part, however, work was carried on simultaneously on
all the three great links or sections into which the enterprise
was divided. Local contractors were given preference by the
commissioners, and three-fourths of the work was done by natives
of the State. Forward up the Mohawk by Schenectady and Utica to
Rome, thence bending southward to Syracuse, and from there by way
of Clyde, Lyons, and Palmyra, the canal made its way to the giant
viaduct over the Genesee River at Rochester. Keeping close to the
summit level on the dividing ridge between Lake Ontario streams
and the Valley of the Tonawanda, the line ran to Lockport, where
a series of locks placed the canal on the Lake Erie level, 365
miles from and 564 feet above Albany. By June, 1823, the canal
was completed from Rochester to Schenectady; in October boats
passed into the tidewaters of the Hudson at Albany; and in the
autumn of 1825 the canal was formally opened by the passage of a
triumphant fleet from Lake Erie to New York Bay. Here two kegs of
lake water were emptied into the Atlantic, while the Governor of
the State of New York spoke these words:

"This solemnity, at this place, on the first arrival of vessels
from Lake Erie, is intended to indicate and commemorate the
navigable communication, which has been accomplished between our