A machine for hauling out stumps was constructed and operated as follows:
"Two strong wheels, sixteen feet in diameter, are made and connected together by a round axle-tree, twenty inches thick and thirty feet long; between these wheels, and with its spokes inseparably framed into their axle-tree, another wheel is placed, fourteen feet in diameter, round the rim of which a rope is several times passed, with one end fastened through the rim, and with the other end loose, but in such a condition as to produce a revolution of the wheel whenever it is pulled. This apparatus is so moved as to have the stump, on which it is intended to operate, midway between the largest wheels, and nearly under the axle-tree; and these wheels are so braced as to remain steady. A very strong chain is hooked, one end to the body of the stump, or its principal root, and the other to the axle-tree. The power of horses or oxen is then applied to the loose end of the rope above mentioned, and as they draw, rotary motion is communicated, through the smallest wheel, to the axle-tree, on which, as the chain hooked to the stump winds up, the stump itself is gradually disengaged from the earth in which it grew. After this disengagement is complete, the braces are taken from the large wheels, which then afford the means of removing that stump out of the way, as well as of transporting the apparatus where it may be made to bear on another."
An implement devised for the underground work demanded on the Erie Canal was a peculiar plough having a very heavy blade by which the roots of the trees were cut; two yoke of oxen could draw this plough through any mesh of roots none of which exceeded two inches in diameter.
The middle section of the canal, from Rome to Lockport, was completed in 1819, twenty-seven miles being navigable in that year. By 1823 the canal was opened from Rochester to Schenectady. Water was admitted into the canal between Schenectady and Albany in October of that year; and by September, 1824, the line was completed from Lockport to Black Rock Harbor on Lake Erie.
In evidence of what the promoters of the Erie Canal expected that highway would be to the Central West we find this interesting fact: Ohio, and even Kentucky, were called upon officially to aid in raising the funds for its building. Indeed, the commissioners in 1817 went so far as to utter a threat against the States lying on each side of New York in case they should not be willing to contribute to the building of this commercial route, which was to be for their common benefit; this consisted in a threat to charge high duties on articles transported to and from those States and the Territories of the United States. It would seem as though New York never expected to be compelled to finance, unassisted, the great work of improvement which she began in 1817. Agents went canvassing for her both in Vermont on the east and in Ohio on the west for the purpose of raising contributions to the canal fund. Agents also were sent to the national Government at Washington, and it was believed that national aid could perhaps be secured from the sale of the public lands in Michigan, very much in the same way as the old National Road was paid for in part by the sale of lands in Ohio a decade before. Though assurances of interest and sympathy were forthcoming from the Government and from all the interested States, there is no evidence at hand to show that New York was aided to the extent of a single penny from any extraneous source. To this fact, we shall see in another chapter, may be charged the opposition of New York delegates in Congress to many government-aid propositions that came up in the era of internal improvements.