英语论文网

BOB DOUGHTY: Big guns were fired in October, eighteen twenty-five in Buffalo, New York. The cannons were part of a celebration to observe the completion of the Erie Canal. Governor De Witt Clinton and his wife left Buffalo on a barge called the Seneca Chief.

The boat moved at the rate of less than five kilometers per hour. It reached the Hudson River nine days later. To mark the arrival, Governor Clinton dropped some water from Lake Erie into the Hudson River.

MARIO RITTER: Within ten years, the Erie Canal had repaid the cost of building it. Transportation of products by canal was less costly than other methods.The waterway carried barges. Most of these boats had flat bottoms for carrying goods. The barges measured up to twenty-four meters long and about four and a-half meters wide.

Mules and horses on land pulled the barges through the canal using ropes. Eighty-three devices called locks raised the barges on the canal by more than one hundred seventy meters from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Men and animals worked hard to pull the barges.

BOB DOUGHTY: Over time, the canal grew. Many improvements were made between eighteen thirty-five and eighteen sixty-two. But a few years later, the canal began to lose importance. Trains were becoming an easier and more profitable way to transport goods.

As the Erie Canal was losing business, some of its levees began to break. Levees normally hold back the water, preventing floods.

The breaks damaged the towpaths next to the canal and stopped travel.

Age or heavy rains often caused the levees to break. But the breaks were not always an accident. Forestport, New York, had been suffering from the closing of businesses. Then, in the last years of the eighteen hundreds, several area levees broke under suspicious conditions.

MARIO RITTER: Breaks in the levees should have been bad news for Forestport. Difficult repairs were needed. But few people in the town seemed sad about the breaks. Instead, many were pleased. Almost two thousand men were brought in to repair the damage.

That was more than the normal population of Forestport.

People crowded into places to eat, drink and play games of chance. The town had money again. Life became as profitable and wild as it had been during the best days of trade on the canal.

BOB DOUGHTY: The administration of New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt grew suspicious. Officials investigated. State officials charged several men from Forestport with plotting to damage canal property.

Michael Doyle is a newspaper reporter who writes about legal issues for California newspapers. In two thousand four, he published a book called "The Forestport Breaks." For the book, he did research about his ancestors who had lived in Forestport. Mister Doyle said he learned that his great-grandfather took part in the wrongdoing.

At the beginning of本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。