The history of the first locomotives in America. From original ...

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HISTOKT OP THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVES IN AMEKICA.
antedated by tlie engine of Mr, Cooper and otlier locomo-
tives, as we shall show; yet it excited great admiration
for its beauty, and even its driver, an Englishman named
John, became a person of consequence. When he came
down, from the engine to oil it, the crowd surrounded
him, as the Iboys at a race surround the dismounted
jockeys on the course. The whole American world
were railroad children in the days we speak of.
The contest for the right of way along the Potomac
between the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Companies—the prelimi-
nary proceedings, in which counsel on both sides, with
surveyors at their heels like moss-troopers, scouted the
banks of the river from the Point of Rooks to "Williams-
port, ferreted out the proprietors of almost inaccessible
cliffs, besieged them in their dwellings to obtain grants
of the right of way, described what railroads were,
oftentimes to men whose knowledge of highways was
confined to mountain-paths, made diagrams and draw-
ings of cars and tracks unlike any thing that ever existed
before or which ever came afterward, and were
believed by an ignorance that was only greater than
their own—these proceedings alone would furnish more
than a dozen chapters, but our limits will not allow us
to record them. The route to the mountains lay up the
valley of the Potomac, and the struggle for priority of
claim was a prolonged and exciting one.
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