 Crowds of people went to see these travel movies of <unk> 's and 1850 's and thus toured the great river vicariously . The throngs that wished to view <unk> 's panorama were so great when it was displayed in Boston and New York that railroads ran special excursions to accommodate them . In these two cities alone more than four hundred thousand people saw the exhibition . " The river comes to me instead of my going to the river , " wrote Longfellow . Whittier , after seeing a panorama , sang of the " new Canaan of our Israel , " and Thoreau , who not only viewed a panorama but also made the tour itself , envisaged a coming heroic age in which simple and obscure men , the real heroes of history , would build the foundations of new castles [ i ] n the West and throw bridges across a " Rhine stream of a different kind . " 
