tlemen from various towns in Berkshire met in North Adams to talk over the matter. Hon. Daniel Noble was chairman, and William E. Brayton was secretary of this meeting; and as a result of the meeting a committee of five was appointed to explore the land and streams between the north branch of the Hoosac and the Deerfield and ascertain whether in their opinion it was practicable to build a canal over the Green Mountains. This committee made an examination and reported that the grades would not prohibit building such a water way and that the neighboring streams were sufficient for supplying the proposed canal. This report was sent to the canal commissioners at Boston. In this same year, 1825, however, the first railroad in America was put into successful operation; and the canal project was abandoned and the idea of tunneling the mountain was conceived. But nothing further was done until a quarter of a century had passed.

The completion of the Western, now the Boston and Albany Railroad, in 1843, suggested a connection with the same by way of Pittsfield, twenty miles away. The town took up the matter with its accustomed energy and appointed a committee to confer with the Western Railroad directors. The estimated cost of the new road was $400,000; but although the manufacturers and merchants of the town strained every nerve and subscribed for $90,000 of this stock, the Western directors declined to build the road. Then the northern Berkshire citizens tried a new tack. They raised $31,000 in cash, to serve as a guarantee fund and to be used in bringing the dividends up to a certain per cent. This plan was acceptable; and the Pittsfield and North Adams road was built and equipped, at a cost of $450,000. And so the "iron horse" began to make its trips, connecting the long isolated north Berkshire region with the outside world. The first passenger train was run between North Adams and Pittsfield on the occasion of the annual cattle show and fair, and the population turned out in such numbers that all the rolling stock, freight cars included, were pressed into service, and the day was one of universal rejoicing.

But the project of a tunnel under Hoosac Mountain and a competing line from Boston to the West would