Page:Convalescent willis.djvu/39

 made their passes while sleighs were running on the river.

The railroad has lessened the urgency of the demand for the winter navigation of the Hudson, but it could always be done "when it would pay." The damage to boats was very great. A gang of ship carpenters was kept waiting on the dock, both at Newburgh and New York, to commence repairs at the moment of arrival. A pipe was arranged to turn steam out upon the wheels, and this melted the ice and dried the wood immediately, so that the carpenters could handle them. They never lost a passage from breakage of paddle-boxes, though they were sometimes terribly shattered. The railroad was then building, and the demand for freight of tools and materials, and passage of workmen, was very great; so that Ward's boat, the Highlander, tried to make two passages in the twenty-four hours—down in the day time and up at night—but the ice in the dark proved too much for them. Another boat was then put on (the Utica), and they crossed each other with day passages.

From the narrowness of the river, at the pass through the Highlands, the ice always closed again where the boat had made a channel, and was often crowded together and piled up "so as to look rather ugly." The Highlander was once stuck, and remained two weeks frozen fast, just opposite West Point; and she was only got out, at last, by