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104 the Dutch is their mother tongue. One of them informs the writer that when he visited Holland he conversed with ease with the people, but that he sometimes used words not familiar to them and afterwards learned that these words were of Indian origin.

As Schenectady is two hundred feet above tide-water at Albany, it early became the headquarters of the western trade, goods being carried to and from the West upon canoes, bateaux, and the "Schenectady Durham boats." The trade developed into large proportions, and during the hundred years closing with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, many traders made fortunes which were considered large in those days. Upon the completion of the canal the commercial prosperity of the city declined. The decline seemed to be confirmed by the era of railroads, notwithstanding the "Mohawk and Hudson" was the first railroad built in the State, its first passenger train arriving in Schenectady from Albany, September 12, 1831, and on the second railroad, the "Saratoga and Schenectady," the first train left Schenectady for Saratoga, July 12, 1832.

The business revival, however, came at last. For fifty years its locomotive works have been