- tistics, which has since developed into the Department
of the Interior. He also moved the first survey of the Pacific railroad line. When he ceased his Prattsville tannery in 1845 he estimated that in twenty years he had used one hundred and fifty thousand cords of bark and wood, had employed thirty thousand men, had cleared twelve thousand acres of land and tanned over one million sides of sole leather. He was, however, nearly seventy years old when he interested himself in Gould. The latter was fortunate in obtaining the confidence of this man. The history of his association with Pratt, and later with Leupp, is not contained in legislative and law reports, as are other portions of Gould's career, but there are several very circumstantial accounts extant based on the testimony of eye-witnesses, some of whom may still be living.
One story has it that the young historian had artfully flattered Pratt in his "History of Delaware County," and so won his good opinion. However this may be, certain it is that Pratt asked the young man who had surveyed his place in Prattsville to embark with him in the business of tanning leather. Gould agreed and immediately demonstrated his capacity for managing the new venture by going over the Delaware and Lackawanna railway, then recently completed, into Pennsylvania, on a search for a site of the proposed new tannery. He found a large tract of land growing hemlock in Lackawanna county and reported the fact to Mr. Pratt. Soon after he started for the hemlock woods again,
