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 PREFACE

ANALS played an important part in the later pioneer movement westward in America. Two monographs of this series, therefore, are devoted to the rise and building of three great canal routes westward, the Chesapeake and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, and the Erie canals.

The present volume is devoted to the Potomac Company and its successor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, and finally the Pennsylvania Canal. In each case the birth and development of the two great railroad routes which follow these canals, the Baltimore and Ohio and the Pennsylvania Railways, is also sketched.

The history of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal is contained in the reports of the company; Hon. Theodore B. Klein has written a very interesting account of the Pennsylvania canals, The Canals of Penn-