Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 14).djvu/57

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EARLY PROMOTERS
53

tion to these objects; and that they report thereon to the legislature, at their next session, presenting a full view of the subjects referred to them, with their estimates and opinion thereon."[1] On April 5 following $3,000 was appropriated for the expenses of the surveys called for in the above resolution.[2]

Accordingly the commissioners named explored the country between the Hudson and Lake Erie through which the prospective waterway would run, in the summer of 1810 with Jesse Hawley's contributions of 1807–08 in their hands. At the next meeting of the legislature they presented an elaborate report. It would seem that the committee had passed over the route of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company from Schenectady to Lake Ontario; James Geddes, the experienced engineer who had given some little study to the region under survey, made a map and a few rough estimates. The report

  1. Public Documents relating to the New-York Canals (New York, 1821), pp. xlix–l.
  2. Laws of the State of New-York relative to the Canals, p. 47.