tons of commodities daily. When it shall yield to this metropolis results like these, sustained and increased by the growing population on its extended line, and beyond its western terminus, we shall be better able to speak of its value, of the foresight evinced by those who projected it, and of the perseverance and exertions by which it has been preserved from oft-impending ruin, and brought into a condition to be completed without much further delay.

It is no part of our present purpose to say anything of individuals who have been concerned, either in bringing forward the project originally, or in surmounting the difficulties which have been encountered at every stage of its progress; it being our object merely to make such observations respecting the work as an examination of the publications of the company, and of other documents, may suggest. These publications and documents are very numerous, and extend over a period of about fourteen years, since the enactment of its charter in April, 1832.

In pursuing this object, we naturally refer, in the first place, to the char. ter of the road, though had we time to spare for them, the events and measures which preceded and led to it, would well deserve some notice. The charter contains in its provisions much evidence that the subject to which it relates had been carefully studied and well considered. It was created at an early period in the history of railways, and when the subject was little familiar to the public. It however contains all the essential privileges and provisions for such an undertaking. The greatness of the work, and of its probable results, appear to have been clearly foreseen; and to reserve its vast benefits to the people of the state and of the city of New York, its route from the city to the lake was confined within this state. It authorized the construction of a single, double, or treble railway, but required the company first to complete a single track from the city of New York, (on the east side of the Hudson to the place of crossing,) or from some point on the western shore of the river in Rockland county, to Lake Erie, before laying the rails for a second track. It is obvious, that with the double advantage of navigation on the river for the transport of commodities to and from all the wharves of the city, and of a railway both for passengers and tonnage, on the east shore of the Hudson from the crossing at Piermont, extending eventually, perhaps, the whole length of the island, all the benefits of this vast thoroughfare may be secured to this metropolis, and in such manner as to insure the greatest possible economy, and convenience both with respect to travel and business. And while we commend the foresight which dictated this part of the charter, we cannot refrain from expressing the opinion that a diversion of the line from the route thus prescribed, or a too long delay of that portion of it which is to penetrate the city, would be found to be alike inconsistent with the interests of the stockholders and those of the public. Before a single track of the road is completed to Lake Erie, the importance of this plan and termination of the work will, we doubt not, be generally felt. It is to New York city the most important feature in the undertaking-the most valuable provision of the charter. And we venture to predict that the first commercial city of the Union, having control and possession of the largest and most important avenue to the distant interior, will not dispense with the advantages and benefits of its main starting point and termination. The grandeur, as well as the economy and advantage in every respect, of a continuous line of railway 450 miles in length, under one charter, pro

tected throughout by the same laws, subject to the same police, the same system of management, the same rates of charges, the same regulations, and the same responsibility, will come, we doubt not, to be duly appreciated by the public. A main railway of the first class, 450 miles in extent, stretching from New York to the lakes, with tributary branches, in the aggregate perhaps of equal length, contemplated as an appendage and commercial arm of the city, is a grand, and even sublime object. No other state can possess a like avenue from the Atlantic to the inland seas of the west, within its own jurisdiction-no other single charter can embrace the extent and terminations of such a line-no other city can enjoy the benefits which it is the part of such a work to confer.

Of this work, as it advances westward, about three-fourths of the line is laid in the valleys of large rivers and their tributaries, viz: the Ramapo, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Chemung, the Canisteo, the Genessee, and the Allegany, along which the grades are very favorable. The ridges between the principal valleys require, in some instances, grades as high as sixty feet to the mile, or a little more than a rise of one foot in a hundred linear feet. But taken as a whole, whether considered in relation to travel or tonnage, the surface of the work in respect to grades is remarkably favorable. The acclivities occur at such distances as to admit of a very economical arrangement of motive power with reference to the tonnage to be conveyed.

In the construction of the road, it was made to differ in one important particular, as our readers probably are aware, from other railways in this part, at least, of the country, viz: in the width of the track; the guage on this work being six feet, and on others four feet eight inches. So far as we have formed any opinion upon the subject, it is in favor of the wide track. Among the reasons for this opinion, we maintain the following only, though the discussion to which the seven feet guage of the Great Western Railway in England gave rise, might enable us to add others of still greater importance. A track six feet in width as compared with 43 feet, admits of proportionably wider and more commodious cars. Their greater length of axle, produces an equable instead of an oscillating motion from side to side, so common on the narrow track, whereby the centre of gravity is thrown alternately from side to side, by which the engines and rails are injured, and the danger of running off the track greatly increased. The importance of these considerations can hardly be over-estimated, and we apprehend that were the question now open on other important railways in the northern and middle states, they would adopt the wide guage.

We observe among the prudential and economical arrangements of this company, what we apprehend is original and peculiar, and on a road of such length, of great and permanent consequence, viz : that in the title deeds obtained for the roadway a covenant is contained, by which the granters are bound to erect, and forever maintain, the fences on both sides of the road. By this means a very large primary outlay, and permanent annual expenses are avoided, as well as the liability to damages for cattle killed on the road.

Our limits do not permit us to pursue this subject further at present, except to add a few remarks on the causes which have so long retarded the work, and the chief sources of the opposition it has met with. The deficiency of available means has from time to time arrested and delayed the work through a protracted period of general embarrassment, in the course

of which the public works of the state, and numerous corporate undertakings, have been suspended. The original subscription to the stock, in the city of New York, was rendered nearly nugatory by the great fire of December, 1835, and commercial revulsion of 1837. The payments on that subscription appear to have been between $300,000 and $400,000. The payments by subscribers on the line of the road amount to near $1,200,000. The loan of three millions from the state was subject to a large reduction, owing to the necessity of selling the stock when the price in the market was greatly depressed. Nothing in the history of the undertaking is more remarkable than that, with a floating debt of about $600,000, and its affairs in the hands of assignees for a considerable period, it should have been preserved from total failure. Fortunately the eastern division had been got into use, and being skilfully managed, and proving more productive than was generally anticipated, earned a considerable surplus beyond the current expenses of the company.

It is to most persons matter of surprise that the company which has so long striven to promote and complete this work, should have met with so much opposition as it appears to have encountered. The mystery is solved by referring both to the open and covert hostility of the political views of party men and demagogues, and to the interests and jealousies of the great northern route to Lake Erie, of particular towns on the Hudson, and of various rival corporations and projects. It is, we presume, owing to the evil influence which has emanated from these sources, that even the city of New York has been politically, or so far as its delegates to the legislature have represented it in this respect, been, with scarcely an exception, opposed to every legislative enactment in its favor. They were in like manner, owing to a similar influence, opposed to the construction of the Erie Canal. Many politicians then, as in more recent times, were opposed to internal improvements and state debts. In the present case, the local interests arrayed against the construction of this great rival avenue as a whole, and other interests affected by particular routes and locations, were sufficient to stimulate all the elements of hostility which could be roused by misrepresentation, detraction, and political demagogueism.

Happily the concern has, by the present law, been brought into a state to be resumed and carried forward; and, the citizens having subscribed the requisite funds, there seems to be a fair prospect that the unfinished portions of the work will be pushed on and completed at an early day. The task of finishing the work is easy, compared with that of doing what has been accomplished. The location of about 350 miles has been settled, and the roadway obtained chiefly by gratuitous cessions. A perusal of the several reports of the directors must, we apprehend, satisfy the reader that the work heretofore done is worth all it has cost, and that the undertaking, if carried out with fidelity and skill, will not disappoint the most sanguine expectations of the stockholders.*

We have received, since this article was written and in type, from a gentleman perfectly familiar with all the circumstances and facts connected with the subject, a clear and comprehensive account of the early history, present condition, and future prospects of this great commercial enterprise, which we shall probably publish in the forthcoming number of this Magazine.

Art. IV. THE PIRACY OF CAPTAIN KIDD.

THE Commerce of the present day between maritime countries enjoys few advantages over that of earlier periods more marked than what it derives from the suppression of piracy. From the earliest dawn of modern trade until comparatively a very recent date, embracing the most authentic and interesting portion of naval history, sea-robbers have been the scourge of navigators. In the time of Pompey, the trade of the Romans was so destroyed by them that from apprehension of a famine, in consequence, that general was despatched with a large fleet and military force to extirpate them-being invested for the purpose with absolute power over the whole Mediterranean, and of the whole of the adjacent shores four hundred furlongs inland. The investiture of such authority would of itself show the enormity of the evil which it was sought to eradicate, if we were uninformed of its extent more particularly. The fact, however, is stated, that the pirates at that time possessed a thousand galleys, and were masters of four hundred cities. In the seventeenth century, when the discovery of the passage, around Africa, to the East Indies, and of America, had given a mighty impulse to navigation, there sprung up a race of freebooters who carried on their depredations on a scale hardly inferior to that of the Cilicians, who were subdued by Pompey. The principal seat of their operations was the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, and South America, where they were known as Buccaneers.* They not only plundered ships, but they ravaged cities and attacked fortified places on shore. Thus in 1671, after attacking the castle of Chagres, they crossed the isthmus and captured the city of Panama, after a desperate battle, in which. six hundred Spaniards fell. They carried away one hundred and seventyfour mules laden with spoil, and six hundred prisoners bearing similar burthens. They were composed of natives of the different countries of Europe, but principally of England and France. Some whose names are familiar to us, were of the number, such as Dampier and Wafer, whose relations of their voyages are well known.

The English Colonies in North America were frequently resorted to by them for various purposes. A Captain Cook came to Virginia in 1683, to dispose of his prize goods.† After they were finally broken up in 1697, some went to the Carolinas to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth, and others settled in Rhode Island, and on the south side of Long Island, whose descendants enjoy among us a respectability more the result of their own merit than that of their ancestors.

Buccaneering was peculiarly the result of the pretensions of the crowns of Portugal and Spain, which, after the discovery of America, had, under the authority of a bull of pope Alexander VI., divided between themselves all the newly discovered lands in both the Indies to the exclusion of other powers. France, England and the Netherlands, the only remaining maritime nations, connived at a system of plunder, which, while it enriched them, weakened the power of their usurping neighbors. When inhabitants of these countries met in the West Indies, all difficulties between

* A name derived from boucan, a Carib term for barbecu'd meat, and applied to them because many of them had been engaged in the business of curing meat in that way, before betaking themselves to this life of rapine and conquest.—Burney's History of the Buccaneers of America.

+ Wafer's Voyage, p. 44.

their princes at home were forgotten, and they banded together under the associated name of "Guards of the Coast," against the common victims, the Spaniards. Those nations even encouraged it by granting letters of marque and reprisal, without requiring process of condemnation of prizes, or otherwise regulating their exercise. In 1586, Sir Francis Drake sacked the city of Saint Domingo, and Lancaster, who commanded the first expedition of the English to the East Indies, had recommended himself to that command by an equally lawless attack on Pernambuco, in 1594.* When complaint was made of transactions of this kind, by the Spanish ambassador to Elizabeth, she replied that the Spaniards had produced that state of things by their injustice, and that she did not understand why either her subjects, or those of any other European prince, should be debarred from trading to the Indies. Piracies on her own coast she promptly punished, as in the case of Clinton and Purser, who were hanged at Wapping during her reign.†

While the buccaneers were depredating upon the commerce of the West Indies, others were similarly engaged on the coast of Africa, and in the Indian Ocean. Of the latter, Captain Thomas Tew, of New York, was one of the most daring and successful. After acquiring a fortune in this vocation he retired to Rhode Island, but was subsequently induced to return to his old mode of life, and to the old scenes of his piracies. He was finally shot in an engagement with a ship of the Great Mogul, hav. ing his belly so torn that he held his bowels in his hands. Another was Captain Avery, an Englishman, who, after robbing the India ships, falsified the old adage, of" honor among thieves," by carrying off the shares of booty of a large portion of his crew, first to Boston and then to England. He met with no better fortune in the end himself, for the merchants, his factors, to whom he entrusted his gold and gems, cheated him in turn, and prevented him from reclaiming his property through fear of exposure.

These pirates of the Indian seas, had their retreats in the island of Madagascar, where many of them retired with great wealth, amalgamated with the dusky daughters of that clime, imitated the habits of eastern princes in erecting walled palaces, and keeping well filled seraglios, and raised a hybrid progeny, who were accidentally discovered living there many years afterwards.

The suppression of the buccaneers and the pirates of the East at length became an object of importance to all the European nations. As the American Colonies of the English, French, and Dutch increased, and the commerce of those nations with the East became enlarged, the power of these buccaneers became correspondingly injurious to them from its indiscriminate exercise, for they intercepted the regular traders in their routes both to India and America. Reasons of state also influenced them to vig. orous measures to put them down. The latter part of the seventeenth century was thus the period of a combined and systematic effort of the powers of Europe, which resulted in the complete destruction of the freebooters, so called. Piracy, however, continued to be followed very successfully, though not with the impunity which it had previously enjoyed.

* Hakluyt, (Ed. 1809-12,) Vol. IV., page 209.

The Dutch were equally severe against pirates on their own shores. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, sixty of them were hung at one time.-Mercurie Fran

cois.

+ Captain Johnson's History of the Pirates, Vol. I, page 58.