542 The Hudson River
"Gone to alarm the town," was the ready answer. Schuyler, hearing this, acted upon the hint, and, putting his head out of a window, called as though to a large body of men, to surround the house and capture the rascals ; u]ion which the in\'aders fled, but, unfortmiately, took the plate with them. Alexander Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, and was counted by the General as one of his dearest friends. When Aaron Burr came first to practise in Albany he was befriended by Schuyler, to whom, through Hamilton, he was destined to deal one of the gravest blows he could endure. Among the chief of those interested in the construction of the great waterway which we moderns know as the Erie Canal, but which to the wiseacres and wits of
that day was familiar as Clinton's Ditch, Schuyler made, in company with Clinton and one or two others, a long horseback journey over the course now followed by the canal. The names of those that Albany delights to honour are legion. We have mentioned but a few of them, and those with a brevity for which the sco])e and variety of the subject-matter of this book must be the excuse. After the Revolution, in 1797, Albany was made the permanent State capital of New York, and its importance from a political point of view drew to it many men of ability and reputation ; but its growth in population was not rapid until after the advent of the steamboat and the completion of the Erie Canal, which has