The year following Lafayette's visit brought another event to be written large in the chronicles of Castle Garden. One of the brightest of the spectacular dis])lays that New York witnessed in the first half of the nineteenth century was that connected with the completion of the Erie Canal, 1825. A fleet as large as had ever assembled before the city up to that time thronged the river, and the vessels were decorated with bunting and

Festivals and Pa;^ cants 49

streamers till it seemed as if they conld hold no more. This gorgeous concourse of vessels formed a circle about the canal-boat -- the first canal-boat-- from Lake Erie. In circumference this marine pageant is said to have measured three miles and to have preserved a solemnity of deportment r|uite in contrast to that noisy hilarity that distinguished the fleet which at a later day sailed down to assist at the unveiling of the statue of Liberty, upon Bedloe's Island. Upon the canal-boat that formed the centre of the circle on the earlier occasion here described was a keg with gilded hoops, filled to the bunghole with water from Lake Erie. With all the dignity which the occasion demanded and the manners of the day prescribed, De Witt Clinton, who was present with his wife and retinue, poured the water overboard to mingle with that of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a prett}" bit of symbolism, possible to people bred to the formalities of a somewhat artificial life, and no doubt carried out with becoming gravity. Medals were then distributed to the honoured guests of the occasion, after which we may surmise that dignity unbent and a somewhat more rampant Americanism reigned. We are told that a lad}^ who was present wrote at a late hour that night; We met all the world and his wife; military heroes, noble statesmen, artificial and natural characters, the audacious, the clownish, the polished and refined; but we were squeezed to death and heartily tired.