SI'. 7 * ' \ ; . '• - ^ ' - . i - . . ED ■" ■■< * * • • . . _ \ . ' A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA A History of Travel in America Being an Outline of the Development in Modes of Travel from Archaic Vehicles of Colonial Times to the Completion of the First Trans¬ continental Railroad : the Influence of the Indians on the Free Movement and Territorial Unity of the White Race: the Part Played by Travel Methods in the Economic Conquest of the Continent: and those Related Human Experiences, Changing Social Conditions and Governmental Atti¬ tudes which Accompanied the Growth of a National Travel System BY SEYMOUR DUNBAR With two maps, twelve colored plates and four hundred illustrations VOLUME I INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS \\l20i . 1)77 V-1 Copyright 1915 The Bobbs-Merrill Company PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. i • 4 V- r- c- f* rj»> V/ ^ J ‘IW v&X. j To L. D. / PREFACE A story of national growth does not simply recite the results of human endeavor: it is more deeply concerned with the character of the people discussed, and with the ideals, motives and methods underlying their acts. Understanding of history is not gained through mere acquaintance with what was done. It is obtained by com¬ prehension of the purpose and manner of the doing. Those individual figures and throngs of mankind who inhabit the pages of written history should not be man¬ ikins or mummies, but living men enacting their daily deeds, vitalized with the spirit that moved them while they were indeed here. We should be able to see them; to hear their cries of fear or delight; to smile at their revelry; feel anger at their evil and deceit, regret at their blunders, pride in their worthy accomplishments. Only by coming thus close to the past—by knowing it to be part of our own lives instead of looking upon it as a museum of curiosities—can we apply its value as a guide to our¬ selves. Doubtless it is no longer possible to tell in words and pictorially portray, with reasonable completeness, the historical conditions considered in these volumes. That this should be so is cause for regret, since the story of those pioneer ideas, struggles and devices out of which grew a nation in the social and economic sense—rather than in a political sense—is the foundation history of the country. We have now reached a period sufficiently removed Vll PREFACE from the pioneer constructive era to see it in its entirety, and, through our ability in that regard, to*profit somewhat by the experiences of those earlier generations. They— just as we of to-day—displayed occasional wisdom in their joint undertakings; were often careless; sometimes quite blind; and at times permitted themselves to be swayed by desires whose indulgence wrought harm to them. But in one particular—during their upbuilding of a transporta¬ tion system—they differed widely from present-day Americans. They sought to create facilities for movement and communication which should meet previous and desperate needs; they built for themselves and their own short day. We are beginning to do much more than that. We are looking ahead, both for the sake of ourselves and for those who are to come after us. It therefore appears that the underlying thought and basic plan of the inexperienced pioneers, out of which grew the system they made and bequeathed to us—and which we are still using—is not altogether such a thought and economic plan as fits our later desire and determina¬ tion. A conflict between old conditions and new ideas has resulted. Various methods and practises which developed out of the pioneer procedure have been outgrown, and no longer fit the age into which they have survived. We are now seeking to rid ourselves of the undesirable parts of our inheritance, with resolution so to do, and are likewise trying to avoid the making of similar mistakes while deal¬ ing with the same large subject. It follows that a study of the pioneers, and of that work of theirs which has come to be of such importance to our¬ selves, may be of aid to us amid our present problems. If the following pages present some past conditions whose intimate relationship to the world of to-day could other- Vlll PREFACE wise have been forgotten, and if they suggest the applica¬ tion of certain principles to our present and future affairs, then the work of preparing them will have been repaid. Nations—like individual men—must struggle over the road of the pilgrim’s progress. In preparing the accompanying volumes reliance has been placed, wherever possible, on original and con¬ temporaneous material for text and illustration. Sources for the text have been files of early newspapers; various collections of manuscripts and documents in libraries, historical societies and elsewhere; diaries, letters and printed chronicles of pioneers; narratives in state and local histories; maps; state and governmental records; and in¬ formation contained in earlier publications of a particular sort, the titles to some of which are given in an appended bibliography. The illustrative material, with its attendant notes, is selected and arranged to form a flowing and connected story of its own, independent of the text. Yet at the same time the pictorial narrative is designed as a commentary on and explanation of the text. Technical description of the original prints and other material will be found in a proper place. I wish to acknowledge my obligation to my friends * Carl Burger, George Marriott, John Price Jones, Charles Fuess, Griffis Rhys Jenkyn, Franklin Harris, George Mather Richards, Frank P. O’Brien, Dexter Cook, Hil¬ lard H. Weer, Thomas Embly, Phanof Eder, Edward Broderick and Leslie Quirk for aid in connection with the preparation of this work. My thanks are due to the American Antiquarian Society; to the British Museum; the Congressional . Library; the State Libraries of Indiana, New Jersey, New IX PREFACE York and Ohio; the libraries of Boston, Cincinnati, In¬ dianapolis, Newark, New York City and Providence; the Society Library of New York City; the University Libraries of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Wyoming and Yale; and the Historical Societies of Connecticut, In¬ diana, Long Island, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsyl¬ vania and Wyoming, for information obtained from those institutions or the use of books and documents contained in their collections. j I wish also to acknowledge my obligation to the anti¬ quarians Messrs. Robert Fridenberg, Emil Sauer, Charles Everitt, Edward Eberstadt, Edward Gottschalk, Joseph Sabin, P. Stammer, Oscar Wegelin and Henry O’Leary of New York City, Messrs. Rosenbach of Philadelphia and Messrs. Goodspeed of Boston, for their professional aid over an interval of years, in searching out and secur¬ ing for me, in America and Europe, the historical illustra¬ tive material herein reproduced. S. D. New York City, October, 1914. c . CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER I A SUMMARY OF THE GENERAL FEATURES OF THE SUBJECT AND AN IN¬ DICATION OF THE METHODS AND PURPOSES HEREAFTER FOLLOWED IN ITS DISCUSSION...1 CHAPTER II : THE CONDITION AND APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY IN EARLY DAYS- DIFFICULTY OF TRAVEL THROUGH THE VAST FOREST-INDIAN TRAILS THE FIRST MEANS AND BASIS OF LAND MOVEMENT BY THE WHITES-TRAVEL BY WATER PREFERRED WHENEVER POSSIBLE- HOW THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF CANOES WERE MADE AND USED. . 14 CHAPTER III EARLY DEVELOPMENT GOVERNED BY THE NEEDS OF COMMUNITIES RATHER THAN BY KNOWLEDGE OR EXPLORATION — THE CENTERS FROM WHICH TRAVEL MOVEMENTS RADIATED-PRIMITIVE BRIDGES -THE BUILDING OF SMALL BOATS BEGUN-A PHILANTHROPIC MISTAKE OF THE DUTCH-ORGANIZED MIGRATIONS OF LARGE COMPANIES OF PEOPLE AN IMPORTANT FEATURE OF THE FIRST CENTURY .24 CHAPTER IV POLE-BOATS AND THE MANNER OF THEIR NAVIGATION-INCREDIBLE LABOR PERFORMED IN USING THEM-THE INFLUENCE OF CON¬ NECTICUT -BEGINNING THE SYSTEMATIC TRANSFORMATION OF INDIAN TRAILS INTO CRUDE ROADS-EARLY FERRIES AROUND BOSTON AND NEW YORK-SEDAN CHAIRS-THE FIRST HORSE VEHICLES AND THEIR TRIUMPH OVER PURITAN PREJUDICE-LAWS AGAINST TRAVEL-THE INTRODUCTION AND EQUIPMENT OF SLEDS -TRAVEL IN WINTER-RESULT OF THE FOUNDING OF PHILADEL¬ PHIA-THE EVOLUTION OF THE OLD INDIAN TRAIL ACROSS NEW JERSEY-LONG HORSEBACK JOURNEYS BECOME POSSIBLE-THE ADVENTURES OF MISTRESS KNIGHT OF BOSTON.38- XI CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER V ANOTHER ELEMENT IN THE PROBLEM-EARLY CONDITIONS PRO¬ FOUNDLY INFLUENCED BY THE NATIVE INHABITANTS-THE STRATEGIC GEOGRAPHICAL POSITIONS HELD BY THE INDIANS- THEIR EARLY ATTITUDE TOWARD WHITE MEN-NATURE OF INDIAN PROPRIETORSHIP OVER LANDS-COVETOUSNESS OF THE WHITES-DEVELOPMENT OF NATIVE PREJUDICE TOWARD ENGLISH TRAVEL MOVEMENT AND ITS CAUSES-TREATMENT OF EACH RACE BY THE OTHER-A CENTURY AND A HALF OF CONFLICT-BLOCK¬ HOUSES -EFFECT OF EUROPEAN POLITICS AND INTERCOLONIAL JEALOUSIES — FIRST SYMPTOMS OF THE IMPENDING WESTWARD MOVEMENT APPEAR-THE DOMINATION OF THE WHITE RACE INEVITABLE . 57 CHAPTER VI EARLY CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH-RADICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ITS DEVELOPMENT AND THAT OF THE NORTH-THE LIMITED MOVEMENT OF EARLY DAYS-ORIGIN AND EFFECT OF THE PLAN¬ TATION SYSTEM-SOCIAL CLEAVAGE-WASHINGTON AS A TYPE OF ONE CLASS-THE TASK OF THE PEOPLE AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY FOUND STRENGTH TO PERFORM IT. 84 CHAPTER VII THE FIRST AMERICANS WHO MARCHED TO THE WEST-THEIR ANCES¬ TRY, QUALITIES, APPEARANCE AND MANNER OF LIVING-LOG CABINS, THEIR CONSTRUCTION, FURNISHINGS AND INDUSTRIES- NATURE OF THE EDUCATION OF THE HILL PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH-THEIR PECULIAR FITNESS FOR THEIR APPROACHING TASK-THE REPUBLIC OF WAUTAGA. 97 CHAPTER VIII POPULAR IGNORANCE OF THE COUNTRY BEYOND THE ALLEGHANIES- DANIEL BOONE COMES ON THE SCENE-HOW HE GOT HIS LOVE OF FORESTS AND SOLITUDE-EIGHT GO AWAY AND TWO COME BACK-THE RESOLVE OF THE CABIN DWELLERS-BEGINNING OF THE WESTWARD COURSE OF EMPIRE-A CARAVAN ON THE MARCH-A TEMPORARY CHECK-THE SCHEME OF THE TRAN¬ SYLVANIA COMPANY. 118 CHAPTER IX BOONE’s WILDERNESS ROAD-FIRST TRAVEL ROUTE MADE BY WHITE MEN TO THE INTERIOR OF THE CONTINENT-THE WARRIORS' PATH, AND HOW BOONE USED IT-WILLIAM CALK’S DIARY OF A JOURNEY TO CAINTUCK-ITS VALUE-WHAT THE FIRST MARCHERS DID WHEN THEY REACHED THE PROMISED LAND- THE FOOD QUESTION-SOME EFFECTS OF THE WILDERNESS ROAD ON THE FORTUNES OF THE REVOLTING COLONIES. 136 • • XII CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER X THE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM FROM 1775 TO 1800 -EX¬ TENSION AND USE OF WILDERNESS ROADS-A JUNCTION POINT IN THE FOREST-THE TRAVEL ROUTE INTO TENNESSEE-RELA¬ TIONSHIP BETWEEN FOREST TRAILS AND RIVERS-EARLY EFFORTS TO IMPROVE THE PATHS-DESCRIPTIONS OF MOVEMENTS OVER THEM-PLACE OF WOMEN IN PIONEER LIFE AND WORK-A CHART OF WESTWARD MARCHES. 151 CHAPTER XI UNIVERSAL TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES, RATHER THAN POLITICS OR WARS, THE COMPELLING FORCE OF A REAL NATIONAL UNITY- INTRODUCTION OF REGULARITY AND PERIODICITY IN TRAVEL-ITS CAUSES AND CIRCUMSTANCES-UNHEEDED GROWTH OF THE PRINCIPLE AND ITS FINAL EFFECT-REGULAR STAGE-COACHES APPEAR-THE FOUR-WHEELED FLYING MACHINE-TRAVEL CON¬ DITIONS BETWEEN PHILADELPHIA, NEW YORK, BOSTON AND BALTI¬ MORE-DESCRIPTIONS BY TRAVELLERS-THE “STEP-LIVELY” ERA BEGINS.... . .171 CHAPTER XII THE ERA OF THE PACK-TRAIN-GENERAL USE OF THAT METHOD OF TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE COUN¬ TRY-OPPOSITION BY PACK-HORSE MEN TO THE INTRODUCTION OF WHEELED VEHICLES-CONDITIONS IN PENNSYLVANIA-TWENTY DAYS TO PITTSBURGH-APPEARANCE OF THE CONESTOGA WAGON—• ITS LONG-CONTINUED IMPORTANCE-WINTER TRAVEL MOST POP¬ ULAR . 192 CHAPTER XIII EARLY TAVERNS-THEIR RELATION TO TRAVEL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS- RATES FIXED BY LAW-CONSTABLES WATCHED TRAVELLERS CLOSELY-HOW THE SLEEPING PROBLEM WAS SOMETIMES SOLVED-A TAVERN DINNER TABLE EQUIPPED TO SATISFY HUN¬ GER RATHER THAN FOR ARTISTIC DISPLAY-LAWS REGULATING RETAIL CHARGES FOR FOOD-UNIVERSAL HOSPITALITY OF THE SOUTH-FIRST TRAVEL TO INTERIOR NEW YORK-EFFECT OF THE REVOLUTION ON THE MENTAL CONDITION OF THE PEO¬ PLE ... 207 • • • Xlll i CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER XIV JOHN FITCH CONCEIVES THE PLAN OF APPLYING STEAM TO THE PUR¬ POSES OF TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION-HIS EARLY METHODS AND MODELS-THE IDEA PLACED BEFORE MANY LEGISLATURES AND PUBLIC MEN-NO ONE GRASPS ITS VALUE-HE SECURES RECOGNITION AND MONOPOLISTIC PRIVILEGES-JEERS GREET THE FIRST BOAT MOVED BY STEAM IN AMERICA-PERSISTENCE OF THE INVENTOR. 232 CHAPTER XV fitch’s SECOND BOAT-CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS OF IT-THE THIRD VESSEL-FIRST REGULARLY OPERATED STEAMBOAT IN THE WORLD-IT IS RUN ON THE DELAWARE FOR SEVERAL MONTHS- MORE CONTEMPORARY STATEMENTS-DISASTER-THE INVENTOR IS CALLED A MADMAN-PERSISTS “FOR THE BENEFIT OF OUR EMPIRE”-GOES TO FRANCE AND LEAVES HIS PLANS THERE- RETIRES TO THE KENTUCKY WILDERNESS AND MAKES A STRANGE WHEELED ENGINE DESPAIR DEATH. 249 CHAPTER XVI THE AGE OF THE FLATBOAT, ARK AND KEEL-BOAT BEGINS-EFFECT OF THE OPENING OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY -—A MILLION PEO¬ PLE DRIFT THROLTGH THE INTERIOR-LIFE ON THE FLATBOATS- CONTRASTS OF TRAGEDY AND REVEL-DESCRIPTIONS AND USES OF THE VARIOUS CRAFT BY WHICH THE FIRST GENERAL TRAVEL TO THE OHIO COUNTRY AND MIDDLE WEST WAS ACCOMPLISHED. . .268 CHAPTER XVII A RIVER JOURNEY THAT ENDED IN TRAGEDY-MANY VOYAGERS IGNO¬ RANT OF WILDERNESS EXPEDIENTS-THE WESTERN BOATMEN — THEIR APPEARANCE, HABITS AND SPEECH-FURNISHINGS OF A FLATBOAT-DANGERS OF NAVIGATION-HUMAN VULTURES- FIRST PERIODIC BOAT TRAFFIC-OHIO PACKETS-THE ADMIRAL OF A FLOATING DEPARTMENT STORE-TIME CONSUMED ON TRIPS-END OF THE FLATBOAT PERIOD.. 288 CHAPTER XVIII INTERIOR NEW YORK RE-OCCUPIED-HOW FENIMORE COOPER ACQUIRED HIS LOVE OF THE WILDERNESS-TALLEYRAND TELLS WHY HE LAUGHED-THE BALTIMORE AND GENESSEE STEAM PACKET-A WATER ROUTE TO THE WEST-ADVENTURES OF MICHAUX, CUM¬ ING AND SCHULTZ-THE MAN FROM ST. LOUIS-A VIEW OF TRAVEL CONDITIONS AS THEY EXISTED JUST BEFORE THE EPOCH OF MECHANICAL VEHICLES. 310 XIV ! * * CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER XIX FULTON AND THE CLERMONT-PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRINCI¬ PLE THAT STEAM COULD BE USED IN TRANSPORTATION-THE SIX¬ TEEN AMERICAN STEAMBOATS OPERATED PRIOR TO THE CLERMONT -RELATION OF EARLY STEAMBOATS TO THE CLERMONT AND INCI¬ DENTS CONNECTED WITH HER EVOLUTION. 341 CHAPTER XX DELAY IN THE INTRODUCTION OF STEAMBOATS-ITS CAUSE-A LOST OPPORTUNITY-FITCH’S RIGHTS IN NEW YORK TRANSFERRED TO FULTON AND LIVINGSTON-THEY PLAN A GENERAL MONOPOLY — THE COURTS CLASS STEAMBOATS, ALONG WITH INFECTED GOODS, AS THINGS WHOSE ENTRY INTO THE STATE MAY BE FORBIDDEN- COMPETITION APPEARS-NEW YORK’S LEGISLATURE AUTHORIZES FULTON TO SEIZE COMPETING BOATS-IT ALSO PROVIDES THAT THEIR OWNERS MAY BE PUT IN PRISON-FIRST STEAMBOAT ON THE OHIO AND MISSISSIPPI-ATTITUDE OF THE PEOPLE AS THEY BEHELD IT-WHAT HAPPENED AT LOUISVILLE....,. 371 CHAPTER XXI EARLY STEAMBOATS OF THE WEST-SHREVE AND HIS CRAFT-THE NEW YORK COMPANY TRIES TO STOP IT FROM RUNNING-SHREVE WINS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST PROCEEDS-CAUSES OF DELAY IN THE EAST-FULTON S OFFER TO THORNTON- NICHOLAS ROOSEVELT MAKES A FEW REMARKS-THE WALK- IN-TH E-WATER-WAR BETWEEN SAILING PACKETS AND STEAM CRAFT-NEW ENGLAND STATES TRY TO KEEP NEW YORK STEAM¬ BOATS OUT OF THEIR WATERS — MONOPOLY FINALLY OVER¬ THROWN-THE USE OF STEAM IN TRANSPORTATION MADE FREE TO ALL AFTER NEARLY FORTY YEARS OF SPECIAL PRIVILEGE. . . .392 CHAPTER XXII CONDITIONS JUST PRIOR TO THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF A MODERN TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM-ORIGIN OF THE FEDERAL DOMAIN OF PUBLIC LANDS-FINAL PHASE OF THE CONTEST BE¬ TWEEN RED MEN AND WHITE-ATTITUDE OF THE GOVERNMENT TOWARD THE INDIANS BETWEEN 1795 AND 1830 -RECOGNITION OF INDIAN SOVEREIGNTY-CAUCASIAN SETTLEMENTS SEPARATED FROM EACH OTHER BY NATIVE TERRITORIES-PERMISSION FOR WHITE TRAVEL THROUGH INDIAN REGIONS OBTAINED BY TREATY- HOW THE SCATTERED SECTIONS OF THE NEW REPUBLIC WERE JOINED BY NATIVE CONSENT-SOME RESULTS OF THE WHITE DIPLOMACY-GENERAL HARRISON’S REPORT OF 1801.415 XV CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER XXIII PURCHASE OF INDIANA AND ILLINOIS-THE GOVERNMENT PREVENTS WHITE MEN FROM GIVING ADVICE TO INDIANS-LAWS OF INDIANA TERRITORY ON THE SUBJECT-FAILURE OF TECUMSEH’s PLAN TO CHECK CAUCASIAN ADVANCE-HOW THE SANTA FE TRAIL, THE MICHIGAN ROAD AND OTHER WHITE TRAVEL ROUTES WERE OB¬ TAINED THROUGH NATIVE CONSENT-EXPERIENCES OF THE SHAWNEES OF OHIO-THE STRANGE WYANDOT TREATY-ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1832 . .... 437 CHAPTER XXIV THE CHARACTER OF THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST BLACK HAWK AND THE SACS-ITS ENDING AT BAD AXE-SUCCESS IN SIGHT IN THE NORTH FOR THE GOVERNMENT’S PLAN TO RID THE EAST OF IN¬ DIANS-RELATION OF THE INDIAN TRADER TO THE RACE DRAMA- THE WILDERNESS ARITHMETIC TABLE-PROCESS AND GENERAL RESULT OF MAKING THE RED MEN A DEBTOR CLASS-NATIVE CHARACTERISTICS THAT MADE THE OPERATION POSSIBLE-SPE¬ CIFIC EXAMPLES. 458 CHAPTER XXV A STRANGE SITUATION IN THE SOUTH-PROBLEMS CREATED BY THREE OVERLAPPING AND CONFLICTING SOVEREIGNTIES-OVERLAND COMMUNICATION BETWEEN NORTH AND. SOUTH BLOCKED ALONG A LINE OF SIX HUNDRED MILES-HEAVY PUNISHMENT FOR UN¬ LAWFUL TRAVEL-THE INDIANS GIVE ROADS THROUGH GEORGIA, ALABAMA, MISSISSIPPI AND TENNESSEE TO THE WHITES-FED¬ ERAL GOVERNMENT DESIRES NATIVES TO MAINTAIN TAVERNS AND FERRIES FOR AUTHORIZED TRAVELLERS-THE CHEROKEE NATION BECOMES PART OWNER OF A WHITE THOROUGHFARE AND RECEIVES MONEY FOR PERMITTING UNITED STATES CITIZENS TO JOURNEY BETWEEN GEORGIA AND TENNESSEE-CAUSES OF THE STRENGTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTHERN RED NATIONS-THE LAW OF 1802 AND THE GEORGIA COMPACT-ELEMENTS OF FUTURE TROUBLE.•. 484 CHAPTER XXVI FURTHER MISTAKES OF MONROE-FIRST OFFICIAL SUGGESTION THAT NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE OF INDIAN PEOPLES IS NOT DESIRED BY THE UNITED STATES-THE CAUCASIAN REPUBLIC STANDS AT THE RUBICON OF POLICY-REFUSAL OF THE CHEROKEES TO SELL MORE LAND AND PROCLAMATION OF THEIR FUTURE PROGRAM-CAL- HOUN’S ADMISSION-MC KENNEY’S REPORT ON CHEROKEE CIVILI¬ ZATION-FURTHER CONTEMPORARY TESTIMONY-J. Q. ADAMS PUTS A STOP TO PREVIOUS METHODS OF TREATY MAKING-GEOR- XVI CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS GIA INVADES INDIAN SOVEREIGNTY-ADAMS’ ACTION IN REPLY- GEORGIA THREATENS TO SEIZE NATIVE TERRITORIES BY VIO¬ LENCE-ADAMS ADMITS THE MORASS OF DIFFICULTY IN WHICH THE COUNTRY IS ENMIRED. 516 CHAPTER XXVII MISSISSIPPI AND ALABAMA JOIN GEORGIA IN THE ATTACK ON NATIVE INDEPENDENCE-DOWNFALL OF INDIAN SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE EAST DRAWS NEARER-JACKSON ASSUMES THE PRESIDENCY AND CROSSES THE RUBICON-CHARACTER OF HIS UTTERANCES ON THE INDIAN PROBLEM-APPEAL OF THE CHEROKEE LEGIS¬ LATURE TO THE WHITE PEOPLE-ACTION OF THE CHOCTAW NATIONAL COUNCIL-PLEDGES OF THE CHOCTAW TREATY—• CONDITIONS OF CHOCTAW SOCIETY-DEMANDS OF THE CHICKA- SAWS AND EXTENT OF THEIR ADVANCEMENT-JACKSON’S PER¬ SONAL JOURNEY TO MEET THE CHICKASAWS AND HIS SPEECH TO THEM-THE UNITED STATES REAFFIRMS NATIVE INDEPENDENCE AND RECREATES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI THE SAME CONDITIONS WHICH IT IS TRYING TO DESTROY IN THE EAST. 552 CHAPTER XXVIII THE CHICKASAWS YIELD-JACKSON’S GRATIFICATION AND THE METHOD OF ITS EXPRESSION-NEW DANGERS ARISE TO THREATEN THE PRESIDENT’S INDIAN POLICY-GEORGIA DEFIES THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND JACKSON PERMITS THE NULLIFICATION-THE CHEROKEES ATTEMPT TO CARRY THEIR CASE TO THE SUPREME COURT AS A FOREIGN NATION-THE COURT DECLARES IT HAS NO JURISDICTION-ITS REASON FOR THE DECISION-UNEXPECTED EVENTS RESULT IN A SECOND JUDGMENT WHICH GIVES THE CHEROKEE REPUBLIC EQUAL RANK WITH OTHER NATIONS, PRO¬ NOUNCES IT INDEPENDENT OF UNITED STATES LAW AND CON¬ DEMNS Georgia — Jackson’s contradictory attitudes and THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 579 CHAPTER XXIX HOPES OF THE SOUTHERN NATIONS APPARENTLY DESTROYED BY THE SUPREME COURT’S FIRST DECISION-CHICKASAWS, CREEKS AND SEMINOLES CEDE THEIR DOMAINS EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI-THE PROMISE MADE TO THEM-IMPORTANCE OF THEIR CAPITULA¬ TION-A TREATY FINALLY SIGNED WITH SOME OF THE CHERO¬ KEES-IT IS REPUDIATED BY THE RED NATION-THE CHEROKEES REDUCED FROM PROSPERITY TO DISTRESS-THEY ARE REMOVED TO THE WEST BY A FEDERAL ARMY-OFFICIAL COMMENT ON THE TRANSACTION-THE EAST AT LAST CLEARED OF NATIVES AND A xvii CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM ON UNBROKEN WHITE TERRITORY 13 MADE POSSIBLE-CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS ON THE RACE QUARREL .. . ...... 600 CHAPTER XXX THE PEOPLE, SOCIETY AND NATURAL CONDITIONS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE MODERN ERA-THE TASK WHICH BEFELL THE LAST PIONEER GENERATION OF AMERICANS-ISOLATION AND MENTAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY OF THE POPULATION-ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES-PECULIAR GOV¬ ERNMENTAL CONDITIONS AND STRANGE LAWS RULE BY AN OLIGARCHY REGULATION OF TAVERNS, ROADS, FERRIES AND NAVIGATION-END OF THE RIVER PIRATES-OVERLAND TRAVEL ROUTES OF THE EXISTING FRONTIER. 621 CHAPTER XXXI A MORE INTIMATE VIEW OF THE PERSONALITY, CHARACTER, THOUGHTS, HABITS, SPEECH AND MANNERS OF THE LAST PIONEER GENERA¬ TION, FROM ITS OWN CONTEMPORARY RECORDS-WHEELED VEHI¬ CLES APPEAR IN THE INTERIOR-TRAVEL ADVENTURES OF A POLITICAL CANDIDATE-A VISIT TO CHICAGO IN 1822 -ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF THE HORSE AND MATTERS GROWING THERE¬ FROM -A NEW TRIAL DECLINED BY A HORSE THIEF-COURT SCENES, PROCEEDINGS AND TESTIMONY IN OTHER SORTS OF CASES-A WHITE MAN HANGED FOR THE MURDER OF AN IN¬ DIAN -THE INTRODUCTION OF THE NIGHTSHIRT INTO INDIANA TAVERNS-DAVY CROCKETT TELLS A STORY OF FLATBOAT LIFE- THE VALUE AND PURPOSE OF AN INQUIRY INTO THE CHARAC¬ TER OF THE LAST PIONEERS-A NEW WILDERNESS CONFRONTS THEM.. 656 CHAPTER XXXII ORIGIN OF THE NATIONAL ROAD-THE GOVERNMENT ADOPTS THE • POLICY OF BUILDING TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES BY PUBLIC FUNDS-THE OHIO LAW OF 1802 -ITS SIGNIFICANCE-LATER CONGRESSIONAL ACTS PROVIDING FOR PUBLIC ROADS OR CANALS THROUGH THE INTERIOR-CONSENT OF THE STATES FOR THEIR CONSTRUCTION NO LONGER ASKED-JEFFERSON AND MADISON FAVOR THE WORK-TWENTY YEARS OF UNIFORM FEDERAL ATTI¬ TUDE — monroe's veto of 1822 — its possible relation to gov¬ ernmental RAILROAD BUILDING A CONTROVERSY ARISES OVER THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS OF THE NATION —- HENRY CLAY'S VISION OF THE FUTURE-HIS TEMPORARY VICTORY-PRESIDENT JACKSON REVERSES THE COUNTRY’S POLICY AND THE NATIONAL ROAD IS DIVIDED AMONG THE STATES.... .691 xviii CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER XXXIII LIFE AND SCENES ON THE NATIONAL ROAD-THE TYPE OF MEN WHO WORKED UPON IT-THREE CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF ITS TRAFFIC-FURTHER EVOLUTION OF THE STAGE-COACH AND IM¬ POSING APPEARANCE OF THE VEHICLE IN ITS FINAL FORM-SOME FAMOUS DRIVERS-FEATS OF HOMER WESTOVER AND REDDING BUNTING-CONESTOGA WAGON TRAINS AND THE WAGONERS WHO PILOTED THEM THE JOKE ON GUSTY MITCHELL HOG MUSIC PROGRESS OF A PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE FATE OF TRAVELLERS WHO JOURNEYED WITH THE DOCUMENT-SPECIAL COACHES FOR THE PRESIDENTS THEMSELVES-VAN BUREN’s ACCI¬ DENT-INCENSE TO THE MEMORY OF A VANISHED DAY.... 717 CHAPTER XXXIV IMPORTANCE OF STAGE-COACH TRAVEL BETWEEN 1800 AND 1840 - SPEED AND RATES OF FARE-COMPETITION BETWEEN RIVAL NEW ENGLAND LINES-ITS EFFECT ON A BOSTON DANCING MASTER- WHEELED VEHICLES OF SMALL USE WEST OF THE ALLEGHANIES UNTIL AFTER 1820 -CHICAGO IN 1833 -DEVELOPMENT OF STAGE LINES IN THE MIDDLE WEST-THE STAGE DRIVER-ACCIDENTS- ADVENTURE OF HENRY CLAY-THE LOST SPEECH OF BLACK HAWK. 741 CHAPTER XXXV America’s early canal period — the nation has not developed BEYOND THE NEED OF CANALS BUT IS NOW APPROACHING ITS REAL CANAL EPOCH-CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA APPEARING BETWEEN 1817 AND 1845 -FIRST AMERICAN ARTIFICIAL WATER¬ WAYS -ELKANAH WATSON’S IDEAS AND WORK-NEW YORK STATE BUILDS THE ERIE CANAL-SCENES AT ITS OPENING- Pennsylvania’s activity — her early error — a change in POLICY RESULTS IN A REMARKABLE ROUTE TO THE WEST-HOW A TRAVELLER GOT FROM PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURGH. 770 • / i _ CHAPTER XXXVI STILL ON THE ROAD TO PITTSBURGH-CANAL BOATS CARRIED BODILY OVER THE MOUNTAINS BY A SERIES OF INCLINED PLANES-ORIGIN OF THE DEVICE-PASSENGERS BY THE PIONEER LINE PROMISED A QUICK TRIP OF FOUR DAYS-COST OF REACHING THE INTERIOR CITIES BY THE PENNSYLVANIA ROUTE-THE CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL-ITS EVOLUTION FROM WASHINGTON’S “POTOMAC COMPANY”-JEALOUSIES OF THE STATES INTERESTED IN THE XIX CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS PROJECT-THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BECOMES A PARTNER IN THE WORK-MONROE APPROVES-JOHN QUINCY ADAMS* SHOVEL STRIKES A ROOT-FINAL COMPLETION OF THE CANAL AFTER MANY DELAYS. 797 CHAPTER XXXVII THE CANAL SYSTEM OF THE MIDDLE WEST-OHIO TAKES THE LEAD- INFLUENCE OF NEW YORK’S EXAMPLE-TWO IMPORTANT WATER¬ WAYS CREATED-THEY UNITE THE OHIO RIVER WITH LAKE ERIE, THE ERIE CANAL, THE HUDSON RIVER AND THE ATLANTIC-INDI¬ ANA’S CANAL HISTORY-AID BY THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT- A FUNDAMENTAL ERROR OF JUDGMENT BY THE WESTERN PEO¬ PLE -m’nAIRy’s DECISIVE SPEECH-THE WABASH AND ERIE CANAL ROUTE ENCOUNTERS AN INDIAN VILLAGE-RESULT OF “log-rolling” LEGISLATION WHEN APPLIED TO PUBLIC IMPROVE¬ MENTS -TRAFFIC ON THE CANAL-COLLAPSE OF INDIANA’S SCHEME-MOBS ATTACK THE WATERWAY-ITS FINAL ABAN¬ DONMENT . . 818 CHAPTER XXXVIII TRAVEL ON THE CANALS-THE EARLY BOATS PATTERNED AFTER KEEL- BOATS AND BARGES-CHANGES IN THEIR FORM AND ARRANGE¬ MENT- LINE-BOATS AND PACKET-BOATS-GOING TO BED ON A CANAL PACKET-THE SLEEPING BUNKS-WHY A TRAVELLER SOMETIMES HESITATED TO CHOOSE A LOWER BERTH -CONDITIONS ON A CROWDED CRAFT-SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR AND TABLES- THE CLOTHES-LINE-EXPERIENCES OF AN UPPER-BERTH PASSEN¬ GER IN AN EFFORT TO GET OUT ON THE ROOF-DELIGHTS OF CANAL TRAVEL-THE “FIVE CENTS A MILE” SCHEME-ADVEN¬ TURES OF AN ENGLISHMAN AND OF HORACE GREELEY. 847 CHAPTER XXXIX THE FOSSIL RAILWAYS OF AMERICA-GENERAL FEATURES CONNECTED WITH THE FIRST APPEARANCE AND USE OF THE RAIL HIGHWAY PRINCIPLE IN THIS COUNTRY-OLIVER EVANS’ PROPOSITION OF 1812 -DESCRIPTION OF THE RAILWAYS BUILT BEFORE 1827 - JOHN STEVENS, IN 1812 , URGES ON CONGRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING RAILROADS AS A NATIONAL UNDERTAKING-CONGRESS CONSIDERS THE MATTER UNIMPORTANT-OBJECT LESSON OF THE STEAMBOAT IGNORED-THE NEW TRANSPORTATION METHOD IS DESTINED TO DEVELOP UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE .. 872 XX CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER XL THE MODERN RAILROAD ACCURATELY FORESEEN AND DESCRIBED BY AMERICAN ENGINEERS BETWEEN 1813 AND 1819 -STEVENS ABAN¬ DONS HOPE OF NATIONAL ACTION -DEARBORN MAKES ANOTHER APPEAL TO CONGRESS IN 1819 -STEVENS BUILDS A LOCOMOTIVE AND EXPERIMENTAL ROAD AT HOBOKEN-HIS TEST OF 1820 THE FIRST INCIDENT IN A SERIES OF EVENTS THAT LED TO AMERICAN ADOPTION OF THE IDEA-THE PENNSYLVANIA CHARTER OF 1823 -PUBLIC DISCUSSION-ATTITUDE OF THE MONEYED MEN-ORGANIZATION OF THE PENNSYLVANIA INTERNAL IM¬ PROVEMENT SOCIETY. 885 CHAPTER XLI STRICKLAND IS SENT TO ENGLAND-THE INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN TO HIM-EXCITEMENT IN THIS COUNTRY OVER THE SUBJECT OF railways — Strickland’s drawings and their effect — a BASIS FOR ACTION AT LAST-COMPARISON OF THE TWO METHODS BY WHICH ENGLAND AND AMERICA APPROACHED A CONCRETE REALIZATION OF THE RAILROAD- UNDERLYING CAUSES OF THE ADVANTAGE POSSESSED BY THE AMERICANS-THEY COULD SEE THE FINISHED CANOE IN THE TRUNK OF THE UNTOUCHED TREE-THE VINDICATION OF THE DREAMERS. 898 CHAPTER XLII THE DREAM-BUILDERS SUPPLANTED BY MEN DESTINED TO PERFORM ACTUAL CONSTRUCTION WORK - EARLY POPULAR IDEAS ABOUT RAILROADS- HOW THE PEOPLE SHOWED THEIR INTEREST-CON¬ TEMPORARY NEWSPAPER COMMENT AND PICTURES-THREE AS¬ PECTS OF THE SUBJECT-OPINIONS ON THE PHYSICAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW DEVICE- HOW TRACKS WERE FIRST BUILT-MANY DIFFERENT G ' UGES- A MISTAKEN NOTION REGARDING THE USE OF RAILWAYS AS HIGHWAYS-ITS RESULTS IN AMERICA-THE CENTER-POST DEVICE-AN INDIANA PREDICTION OF 1830 -RAIL¬ ROADS AS MORAL INFLUENCES-A MASSACHUSETTS ROAD ASKS FOR SERMONS IN ITS BEHALF- ONE OF THE RESPONSES. 914 CHAPTER XLIII RAILWAY BUILDING BEGINS IN MARYLAND AND SOUTH CAROLINA- CAN A RAILROAD TRACK SUCCESSFULLY CROSS A GUTTER?-THE BALTIMORE EDITORS TRY A HORSE LOCOMOTIVE-OBJECTIONS TO THE SINGLE-MASTED METEOR-VON GERSTNER’s OBSERVA¬ TION-A NEWSPAPER ANNOUNCEMENT OF AMERICA’S FIRST PASSENGER TRAIN-THE TOM THUMB VERSUS HORSE POWER- CHARLESTON CREATES THE FIRST RAILWAY DESIGNED FOR STEAM - America’s pioneer home-made locomotive — its explosion — LATER PRECAUTIONS OF THE DIRECTORS-THE FIRST NEW YORK XXI CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS STATE RAILROAD-OPPORTUNE PRESENCE OF MR. BROWN AT ALBANY-HE MAKES A PICTURE-ALL ABOARD FOR SCHENEC¬ TADY -SOME INCIDENTS THAT OCCURRED IN A TRIP OF SEVEN¬ TEEN MILES.. . 943 CHAPTER XLIV MORE EXPERIENCES ON EARLY AMERICAN RAILWAYS-MANNER IN WHICH A PENNSYLVANIA ROAD ACQUIRED A LOCOMOTIVE-AC¬ COUNT OF ONE OF ITS TRIPS BY A PEDESTRIAN PARTICIPANT- NEW YORK CITY’S FIRST LINE-APPREHENSIONS OF THE PUB¬ LIC-PRECAUTION TAKEN TO SOOTHE THEIR FEARS-THE RE¬ SULT -THE CAMDEN AND AMBOY ROAD-ITS MONOPOLY OF TRAFFIC ACROSS NEW JERSEY-HOW ISAAC DRIPPS BUILT A LOCO¬ MOTIVE TENDER-THREE NEW ENGLAND ENTERPRISES-NO STEAM TRAVEL THERE UNTIL 1834 -ONLY SIXTEEN HOURS BE¬ TWEEN BOSTON AND NEW YORK-PROTEST OF AN OLD-FASHIONED TRAVELLER . . . . . . 976 CHAPTER XLV AN UNEXPECTED DEMAND FOR TRAVEL FACILITIES-ITS EFFECT- FROM FENCE-RAIL TO AUTOMATIC COUPLER-EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PASSENGER COACH-DESCRIPTIONS OF EARLY COACHES-CARS WITH UPPER DECKS, CUPOLAS, FLAGS AND BAR¬ ROOMS — A STANDARD PASSENGER VEHICLE FINALLY EVOLVED- CAPTAIN VERSUS ENGINEER-CAPTAIN AYRES INVENTS THE BELL- ROPE AND HAS A FIGHT-CONSEQUENCES OF THE COMBAT- EARLY SIGNAL SYSTEMS-STOPPING AN ENGINE-THE SIGNAL POLE-THE ORIGIN OF SOME RAILWAY EQUIPMENT AND PRAC¬ TISES .•. 1008 CHAPTER XLVI EARLY RAILROAD TICKETS-THE “BOOKING” SYSTEM-ITS PRACTISE AT PHOENIXVILLE-THROUGH TICKETS PREVENTED BY THE JEAL¬ OUSIES OF ADJOINING ROADS-FREE PASSES APPEAR-ORIGIN OF THE MODERN RAIL-DRIPPS INVENTS THE COWCATCHER-THE FIRST PRIVATE CARS-SLEEPING CARS USED IN 1838 -THEIR CONSTRUCTION-THE TELEGRAPH EMPLOYED BY RAILWAYS- AMERICAN ROADS FREE FROM SERIOUS FATALITIES FOR TWELVE YEARS-REASONS FOR THE PHENOMENON-THE ACCIDENT PERIOD BEGINS-POPULAR OUTCRY-ATTITUDE OF THE PRESS- new York’s regulations of 1856 . 1036 CHAPTER XLVI I APPEARANCE OF RAILWAYS IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY-OHIO’S PIO¬ NEER ROAD-BUILDING A TRACK TO FIT AN ENGINE-INFLU¬ ENCE OF THE “SANDUSKY” ON RAILROAD HISTORY-THE FIRST xxii CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS STEAM TRIP IN KENTUCKY-PROTECTING A LOCOMOTIVE FROM SNOWFLAKES - INDIANA CONTRACTS THE FEVER - JOSEPH BRUEN’S MIGRATORY RAILWAY-HOW INDIANA GOT HER FIRST REAL ENGINE IN 1838 -ILLINOIS BUILDS A ROAD-- THE STRANGE TRAIL ON THE PRAIRIE-CHICAGO’S ENTERPRISE-THE TOWN FORBIDS A RAILWAY TO ENTER ITS LIMITS-EARLY ROADS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES-WORK OF CINCINNATI AND ST. LOUIS-THE MISSISSIPPI FINALLY REACHED BY IRON TRACKS-THE CELEBRA¬ TIONS OF 1857 .• 1062 CHAPTER XLVIII GENERAL VIEW OF TRAVEL CONDITIONS EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI JUST BEFORE THE GREAT OVERLAND RUSH TO THE FAR WEST-A CON¬ FUSING AND CHAOTIC HODGE-PODGE OF STAGE-COACHES, STEAM¬ BOATS, CANALS AND LITTLE RAILWAYS-ONLY TWO WEEKS RE¬ QUIRED FOR AN EXTENSIVE TRIP IN THE EASTERN REGION-MORE SYMPTOMS OF IMPROPER RAILWAY PRACTISES APPEAR-FRAUDS COMMITTED ON TRAVELLERS-COSTS OF VARIOUS JOURNEYS AND THE TIME CONSUMED BY THEM-CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH AND MIDDLE WEST-FROM BALTIMORE TO NEW ORLEANS IN SEVEN DAYS, BY MEANS OF FIVE RAILROADS, TWO STEAMBOATS AND TWO STAGE-COACHES, AT A COST OF $ 62.50 . 1096 CHAPTER XLIX THE OVERRUNNING OF THE WEST-LAST PHASE OF A TASK COMMENCED MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES BEFORE-AN OUTBURST OF HUMAN ENERGY AND AMBITION-OUR TWO VIEWS OF THE MIGRATIONS —• THEIR WORLD IMPORTANCE-BOONE’S INFLUENCE STILL ACTIVE- VALUE OF THE MISSOURI RIVER AS AN EARLY ROUTE INTO THE WEST-ITS PIONEER CRAFT-FIRST STEAMBOATS-AUDUBON AND THE WHISKY-CAPTAIN SIRE’S INSPIRATION. 1125 CHAPTER L THE RELATION OF THE INDIANS OF THE WEST TO TRANSCONTINENTAL TRAVEL-RED PEOPLES NATIVE TO THE REGION BEYOND THE MIS¬ SISSIPPI STILL RETAINED THEIR SELF-RULE AND OWNED MUCH OF THE LAND WHEN THE GREAT OVERLAND MIGRATIONS BEGAN-IN¬ DIANS TRANSPLANTED FROM THEIR EASTERN HOMES ALSO FORMED A BARRIER TO WHITE MOVEMENT JUST WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI- TREATY RELATIONS BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND THE WESTERN TRIBES-THE NATIVES ARE PAID LARGE SUMS FOR THEIR CONSENT TO WHITE TRAVEL TOWARD THE PACIFIC AND FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF BUILDING RAILROADS. 1 161 XX1U CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER LI THE CAUCASIAN CONQUEST OF THE OREGON COUNTRY-FLOYD AND BAILES, THE SEERS OF 1820 -TRACY INVENTS THE IRRECLAIMABLE WESTERN DESERTS OF SAND-RACE ANTAGONISM APPEARS BEYOND THE MISSISSIPPI-WAGONS REACH THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS- INFLUENCES THAT DIRECTED PUBLIC ATTENTION TO THE NORTH¬ WEST-WHITE WOMEN FIRST CROSS THE CONTINENT-BONNE¬ VILLE AND WHITMAN TAKE WAGONS ACROSS THE ROCKIES-NEW England’s part — origin and organization of the “great migration” of 1843 -A reversion to the early clan method OF OVERLAND TRAVEL-APPLEGATE’S STORY OF THE MARCH ..1188 CHAPTER LII THE SOUTH PASS ROUTE TO THE FAR WEST-A TRAPPER WHO WAS ALSO A STATESMAN- EARLY RECORDS AND HISTORY OF THE PASS- WHITMAN JOINS THE MIGRATION OF 1843 -COMMENT OF AMERICA AND ENGLAND ON THE OVERLAND MOVEMENT-ITS IM¬ POSSIBILITY DEMONSTRATED IN PRINT WHILE IT IS BEING PER¬ FORMED-THE OREGON SETTLERS FORM A GOVERNMENT-WHIT¬ MAN AND HIS COMPANIONS KILLED-THE RESULT-DISCOVERY OF JOHNSON AND WINTER’S LOST BOOK-THEIR ACCOUNT OF THE BLOOD COUNCIL AT WAIILATPU-THE TWO TRAVELLERS DESCRIBE THE RACE CONSEQUENCES OF WHITE MOVEMENT INTO THE NORTH¬ WEST AND RECORD THEIR VISION OF THE FUTURE. 1213 CHAPTER LIII THE MORMON OVERLAND PILGRIMAGE OF 1846-1848 -EVENTS THAT LED TO IT- EXPULSION OF THE CHURCH OF LATTER DAY SAINTS FROM NAUVOO-COMMENCEMENT OF THE MOST PRETENTIOUS GROUP-MIGRATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY-LIFE IN THE LOG HUTS, SOD HOVELS AND CAVES—• ATTITUDE OF THE INDIANS-A WINTER OF SUFFERING-MARCH OF THE ADVANCE PARTY IN 1847 -DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT SALT LAKE VALLEY-TAKING THE NEWS BACK TO THE MISSOURI-ANOTHER WINTER IN THE WILDERNESS-ARRIVAL OF THE WANDERING HOST IN UTAH AFTER TWO AND A HALF YEARS ON THE ROAD- UTAH SETTLED. . . . 1237 CHAPTER LIV THE CRY OF “GOLD”-ITS EFFECT-CONDITIONS IN CALIFORNIA DUR¬ ING 1846 -THE LAST GREAT RUSH OF THE PEOPLE BEGINS- DARK SIDE OF OVERLAND TRAVEL ILLUSTRATED BY THE AD¬ VENTURES OF THE DONNER PARTY-IT IS TRAPPED IN THE MOUN¬ TAINS BY SNOW-EFFORTS TO ESCAPE-MARCH OF THE “FIF¬ TEEN” -HUMAN FLESH AS FOOD-LIFE IN THE BURIED CABINS -A CHRISTMAS FEAST-HALF THE EMIGRANTS ULTIMATELY RESCUED-THE INDIAN GUIDES. 1270 XXIV CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS CHAPTER LV THE SUFFERING OF THE DONNER PARTY NOT TYPICAL OF CARAVAN TRAVEL TO CALIFORNIA-THE ROAD BECOMES CROWDED-A LATER NARRATIVE, SHOWING THE EXPERIENCES OF THE MARCHERS FROM 1849 ONWARD-DIARY OF JAMES ABBEY-HE AND HIS COM¬ PANIONS CROSS THE CONTINENT IN FOUR MONTHS AND SIXTEEN DAYS-STAGE-COACHES APPEAR-THEY START ONCE A MONTH FROM INDEPENDENCE AND SALT LAKE CITY-ACTION OF CONGRESS IN 1857 -ITS RESULT-THE OVERLAND MAIL-FINAL CONDI¬ TIONS BEFORE THE COMING OF THE RAILWAY. 1298 CHAPTER LVI THE IDEA OF A RAILROAD TO THE PACIFIC-ONE FINAL TASK NECES¬ SARY IN THE LONG STRUGGLE FOR CONTINENTAL CONQUEST- BIRTH OF THE SCHEME-ITS EARLY ADVOCATES-PARKER’S WORDS-ASA WHITNEY APPEARS- HIS PROPOSAL AND THE WIDE¬ SPREAD SUPPORT IT RECEIVED-THE IDEAS OF CONGRESS-WHY whitney’s plan could not succeed — its relation to the OREGON MIGRATIONS-EFFECTS OF THE EVENTS OF 1848 -THE RAILWAY CONVENTIONS-A CONTEST FOR ADVANTAGE-EASTERN JEALOUSIES DELAY THE PROJECT FOR A DOZEN YEARS. 1320 CHAPTER LVII ANOTHER CAUSE THAT HELD BACK THE FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL RAIL¬ WAY -NORTH AND SOUTH COULD NOT AGREE ON ITS LOCATION- THE REASON-SENATOR IVERSON’S SPEECH-A LAW IS FINALLY PASSED-THE QUESTION OF TRACK-WIDTH ARISES-THE CON¬ FUSION OF EXISTING GAUGES-LINCOLN’S DECISION-CONGRESS REFUSES TO ACCEPT IT-ACTUAL WORK BEGINS-HOW IT WAS PERFORMED-A HISTORIC SCENE UP IN THE MOUNTAINS-THE PEOPLE LISTEN IN THE STREETS-THE OCEANS JOINED. 1337 CHAPTER LVIII SUMMARY OF PRESENT CONDITIONS... 1357 XXV Key to Abbreviations A list of the abbreviations used in the technical descriptions of the engraving, size, origin, date and other features of the original prints, drawings, manuscripts, documents, broadsides, maps, and similar material reproduced for illustrative purposes is here given. The technical de¬ scription, in each case, follows the general description in the List of Colored Plates or List of Sm.Small. L.Large. 12mo.Duodecimo. 8vo.Octavo. 4to.Quarto. F.Folio. W.Engraved on wood. S..Engraved on steel. C.Engraved on copper. A.Aquatint. M.Mezzotint. Lith.Lithograph. Col. Lith.. .Lithograph printed i colors. Lith. Col.. .Lithograph colored after printing. C. Col.Copper-plate colored- after printing. O.Original. Dr.Drawing. D.. .Document. Ms.Manuscript. B.Broadside. Adv.Advertisement. T.Type. c.About. Proof .Unpublished. Amer.American. Names of countries other than America are not abbreviated. If the engraving was originally published in Germany, France, England,. Scotland, Holland, Sweden, or elsewhere, it is so stated. In any case wherein the original engraving or drawing had a blank margin of considerable or unnecessary width, a part of the blank paper surrounding the drawing or engraved surface has been omitted in the photographic reproduction, as an economy of space. In a few instances wherein only one detail of the original engraving or map required display, that feature alone has been reproduced and the irrelevant part of the original is not shown. Such cases are indicated in the technical descriptions by the words “Section of.” Save for the exceptions stated, the material used for illustration is shown in original form and existing condition. XXVI List of Colored Plates I. An American stage wagon of 1780-1790. — 8vo. Lith. Col. Dutch, c. 1820. Original colors. Frontispiece: Vol. 1 II. Deck plan of an early American paddle-wheel steam¬ boat.— L. F. O. Dr. Amer. 1801-1803. Orig¬ inal colors .Page 318 III. An amended deck plan of the same boat. — L. F. O. Dr. Amer. 1801-1803. Original colors. ... Page 319 IV. Flatboatmen and travellers on a. Mississippi broad- horn.— Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856. Original colors.Frontispiece: Vol. II V. Burning of the steamboat New Jersey. A Catastrophe Broadside. — F. Lith. Col. Amer. c. 1848. Original colors .Page 411 VI. Flatboats and steamboat passing Cave-in-Rock, a haunt of river pirates. — L. F. C. Col. French, c. 1845. Original colors.Page 650 VII. An example of Erie Canal wall-paper. — L. F. Sten¬ cil Process. Amer. 1825. Original colors, Frontispiece: Vol. Ill VIII. Passenger trains on an inclined plane of an early Amer¬ ican railway. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. Amer. 1840. Original colors.Page 791 IX. The “Success to the Railroad’’ whisky bottle.—Olive- green glass. Molded. Amer. c. 1828. Original color.Page 920 X. The collision on the North Pennsylvania Railroad, near Philadelphia, in 1856. A Catastrophe Broad¬ side.— F. Lith. Col. Amer. 1856. Original colors.Frontispiece: Vol. IV XI. Race between the Mississippi River steamboats R. E. Lee and Natchez. — F. Lith. Col. Amer. 1870. Original colors .Page 1242 XII. An observation car on the first transcontinental rail¬ road.— 12mo. Col. Lith. Amer. 1870. Orig¬ inal colors .Page 1356 xxv u LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 1. Indians making a log canoe. — 12mo. C. French, c. 1820. Copy of a 17th century Dutch print. 4 2. An early white traveller in a log canoe. — F. C. Dutch. c. 1680. 8 3. Large coastal canoes and sailing craft.— 12mo. C. French, c. 1680. 11 4. Indians building bark canoes in the forest. — 4to. S. Canadian, c. 1838. 16 5. Travelling in the wilderness by bark canoe.— 4to. S. Canadian, c. 1838. 19 6. Building pinnaces in New Amsterdam for coastal jour¬ neys.— 12mo. Lith. Amer. 1861. 22 7. Constructing a large sailing boat on land. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1830. 26 8. Earliest type of bridge in the Wilderness. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1825...-.. 27 9. Second variety of the primitive American bridge. — 4to. C. Amer. c. 1830. 31 10. Movement of an organized caravan through the forest. — Sm. C. Amer. c. 1820. 34 11. First forms of the ark and keel-boat; most primitive craft designed by white men in America. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1812. 39 12. Two keel-boats working their way up a small river. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1808. 4J 13. Bill submitted by a ferryman of Massachusetts Bay Prov¬ ince.— O. Ms. 1709. 43 14. An early sailing ferry boat in New York Harbor.— 12mo. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 44 xxviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 15. First type of wheeled vehicles to appear in America: pri¬ vate coaches for use in New York and Philadelphia. — 12mo. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 47 16. The type of sleigh called the cariole. — 8vo. A. English. c. 1815. 49 17. Winter travel on snow-shoes in New England. — Sm. C. Amer. c. 1820. 51 18. Winter travel by means of the dog-sled. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1830. 54 19. A home-made horse-barrow. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825. 60 20. The Yarmouth coach. — Sm. C. English, c. 1780... 65 21. An early form of wagon for travel through the woods and between settlements. — Sm. C. Amer. c. 1820... 69 22. A New England two-wheeled ox-cart in a New Haven street. — 4to. S. Amer. c. 1838. 75 23. The caleche, an ancestor of the one-horse chaise. — 12mo. C. French, c. 1820. 79 24. A very fine private coach of the late 18th century. — F. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 85 25. Manner of taking a private coach across a river. — 8vo. A. Amer. c. 1830. 89 26. Third step in the evolution of the bridge: built of timber, to sustain wagons.— 12mo. S. Amer. c. 1835... 93 27. A backwoodsman and his dog. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825. 98 28. Backwoodsmen at work in the forest. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825. 101 29. After the ax had passed. Appearance of newly cleared land. — 4to. C. English, c. 1825. 107 30. The home and clearing of a backwoodsman. — 8vo. Lith. English, c. 1830. Ill 31. A cabin dweller’s home. — 12mo. Lith. Amer. c. 1840 . 115 32. A two-story timber blockhouse. — Sm. F. C. English. 1780 . 119 \ XXIX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 33. Floor plans and section of the blockhouse shown in the preceding. — Sm. F. C. English. 1780.... . 125 34. Timber fort, with watch tower and out-buildings. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1795. 129 35. Pioneer ferryman navigating a small canoe by means of a setting-pole. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825 . 132 36. Travelling family preparing a meal over a camp-fire.— O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825.... 137 37. A loaded pack-mule. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825 . 139 38. Backwoodsman putting his wife on a pack-horse. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825. 143 39. A traveller and his pack-horse climbing a hill. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825. 147 40. Cumberland Gap, the gateway of overland travel through the Alleghanies. — 4to. S. Amer. c. 1845. 154 41. Overland travellers pausing at the top of a hill. — Sm. F. C. Amer. c. 1830. 158 42. An incident of life in the Kentucky forest. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1840. 161 43. Town-people as they appeared in the 18th and early 19th century. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810- 1825 . 165 44. Usual sort of town houses and streets. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1830. 168 45. A stage wagon: type of the first public and periodic land travel conveyance. — Sm. Amer. Lith. copy, c. 1845, of W. and T. Adv. Amer. c. 1750. 173 46. Mercereau’s Flying Machine. — Sm. Amer. Lith. copy, c. 1845, of W. and T. Adv. Amer. 1771. 174 47. Stage wagon of the sort used between 1780 and 1800. — 4to. C. English, c. 1798. 178 48. Stage wagon passing through Philadelphia. — 4to. A. English, c. 1807. 181 49. An early stage running between Baltimore and Washing¬ ton.— 12mo. Lith. Amer. c. 1835. 185 XXX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 50. Announcement of a line of sailing packets. — Sm. W. and T. Adv. Amer. 1825. 189 51. The main cabin of a passenger sailing packet. — O. Dr. Unsigned. Amer. c. 1830. 193 52. Commencement of a journey on a small sailing vessel. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1840. 197 53. A Conestoga wagon. — Sm. W. Amer. 1822. 201 54. A Conestoga wagon approaching Baltimore. — Sm. C. German, c. 1825. 203 55. Fraunce’s Tavern, in New York City.— 12mo. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 209 56. The Notch House, a noted New Hampshire inn. — 4to. S. Amer. c. 1840. 211 57. Poem about a New Hampshire tavern.— 12mo. Amer. 1821. 213 58. The Raleigh Tavern. — Sm. W. Amer. c. I860.... 215 59. A large inn, with stage-coach, private coach and chaise. — Section of F. Lith. Col. Amer. c. 1835. 218 60. An incident of pedestrian travel. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1815 . 221 61. Travellers in the assembly room of a tavern. — 8vo. W. and T. Scotch. 1836. 225 62. McCann’s two-penny piece: tavern money of the Revo¬ lutionary period.— Brass. Amer. c. 1770-1785.... 227 63. Paper money issued bv a tavern keeper. — Sm. C. Amer. 1816 .'. 229 64. Fitch’s first steamboat; built in 1785. — Sm. W. Amer. 1857 . 235 65. Propulsion method of Fitch’s first boat. — Sm. W. Amer. 1857 . 238 66. Fitch’s second boat; operated in 1786. — 8vo. C. Amer. 1786 . 242 67. Title page of Rumsey’s pamphlet on steamboats. — 8vo. Amer. 1788 . 245 68. Fitch’s third boat: operated on the Delaware in 1788- 1790. —8vo. W. Amer. c. 1850. 251 XXXI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 69. Contemporary printed account of Fitch’s third boat: page 493 of the New York Magazine. — 8vo. Amer. 1790. 255 70. Fitch’s screw propeller of 1796 or 1797. — Section of F. Lith. Amer. c. 1845. 259 71. Fitch’s last steam-engine: built in Kentucky in 1798.— Sm. F. Lith. Amer. c. 1854. 263 72. Title page of Thornton’s pamphlet on steamboats. — 8vo. Amer. 1818. 265 73. A covered keel-boat, or barge, of the sort propelled by the use of poles. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1850. 269 74. The flatboat; also called Ohio boat or Kentucky boat. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1835. 271 75. A helmsman on a flatboat. — O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810-1825. 273 76. Travellers dancing on top of a flatboat. — 4to. C. Amer. c. 1840. 275 77. Sample page from a chart-book used by flatboat travellers. — 8vo. W. Amer. 1838-1843. 278 78. Text of directions accompanying the preceding chart. ... 279 79. Group of travellers smoking and telling stories on a flat- boat.— O. Dr. by Joshua Shaw. Amer. c. 1810- 1825 . 283 80. A broadhorn on the Ohio River. — S. F. Col. Lith. Amer. c. 1840. 285 81. Small flatboat, equipped with a sail.— 12mo. S. Amer. c. 1835. 289 82. Large flatboat: also called Orleans boat or Mississippi boat. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856. 290 83. Mississippi flatboat with superstructure of lumber. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1860. 292 84. Arks of the Susquehanna River. — 4to. S. Amer. c. 1835 . 295 85. An Ohio River ark. — 12mo. S. Amer. c. 1835. .. . 297 86. Rafts pulled by oxen. — 4to. S. English, c. 1838... 299 87. Sailing barge of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856. 301 xxxii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER * PAGE 88. The batteau. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1830.. 302 89. Boat used by Henry Lewis while painting the scenery and traffic of the Mississippi River. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856. 305 90. A sunken tree in the Mississippi. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856. 307 91. Broadside view of the Baltimore and Genessee Steam Packet. — L. F. O. Dr. Unsigned. Amer. c. 1801- 1803 . 311 92. Oliver Evans’ steamboat of 1804. — 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1840 . 313 93. John Stevens’ screw-propeller steamboat of 1804. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern. 315 94. Stevens’ twin-screw propeller steamboat of 1805. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern. 320 95. Ticket of a bridge and turnpike lottery. — O. D. Amer. 1812. 323 96. Robert Fulton’s steamboat Clermont, as she appeared in 1807. — Photograph of De Witt’s drawing of 1858. Amer. 325 97. The Clermont as she appeared in 1808. — Photograph of De Witt’s drawing of 1858. Amer. 328 98. The Paragon, Fulton’s fourth boat. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1812 . 330 99. One of Fulton’s early boats: possibly the Paragon after her sails were removed. — 8vo. C. Proof. Amer. c. 1813 . 333 100. The Chancellor Livingston; Fulton’s last boat. — L. F. A. Swedish, c. 1820. 335 101. The New Orleans, first steamboat on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. — Sm. W. Amer. 1856. 337 102. View of the harbor of Buffalo in 1815. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1816. 343 103. The Walk-in-the-Water; first steamboat on Lake Erie. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern. A copy of Sm. W. Amer. 1818. 346 104. A Dandy Carriage; earliest form of the bicycle. — 8vo. C. English, c. 1815. 348 XXXlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER * PAGE 105. A Hudson River passenger barge of 1825. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1825. 350 106. New York steamboat, passenger barge, ferry boat and ferry dock of 1825. — L. F. O. Dr. Dutch. 1825 354 107. The Champlaine, a fine Hudson River steamboat of 1835. — L. F. Lith. Col. Proof. Amer. c. 1835.. 356 108. The Swallow, another Hudson River boat of the fourth decade. — 8vo. C. English. 1838. 358 109. Travellers on the deck of a Hudson River boat. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1840. 360 110. Man going to bed on a big steamboat. — Sm. W. Amer. c» 1840 . 364 111. Women’s cabin of a large steamboat at night. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1855. 366 112. The Longfellow, a catamaran steamboat of the Hudson. — F. Lith. Col. Amer. c. 1850.... . 368 113. The Holyoke, an early Connecticut River steamboat.— 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1850. 373 114. A reward-of-merit card for a school child. — Sm. card¬ board. W. and T. Amer. c. 1835. 376 115. The Milwaukie, a pretentious steamer of the Great Lakes in 1838. — L. F. A. Amer. 1838. 378 116. The Ohio and Mississippi River steamboat Belvidere, 1825. — Sm. C. German, c. 1830. 381 117. Types of rivermen in 1825. — 4to. C. English, c. 1826 . 384 118. The Ohio River steamer Flora, 1835. — O. Dr. Amer. c. 1835 . 387 119. An Ohio River flat-bottomed steamboat. — 4to. Col. Lith. Amer. c. 1840. 390 120. Typical Mississippi River steamer of 1837. — 8vo. C. English. 1838 . 394 121. The Jacob Strader. — Sm. F. W. Amer. 1854. 397 122. Cincinnati’s river front at the height of the steamboat era. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1850. 399 123. Louisville’s river front during the same period. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1850. 401 xxxiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 124. A Mississippi steam packet loaded with cotton. — 12mo. W. English, c. 1845. 402 125. Mississippi River steamboat halting at night to obtain wood. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856... 406 126. Flood time along the Mississippi. — 8vo. Lith. Eng¬ lish. c. 1835. 409 127. Sample page from Hall’s List of Western Steamboats. — 12mo. Amer. 1848. 411 128. An Indian trader’s license issued by William Henry Har¬ rison when Governor of Indiana Territory. — Sm. F. O. D. 1803. 417 129. A dog-sled of the Northwest Territory. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1800. 420 130. Typical page from an Indian trader’s account book.— 12mo. O. Ms. Amer. 1801-1802. 423 131. A white men’s caravan travelling along the course of a river.— 12mo. Lith. Amer. c. 1832. 430 132. Cincinnati in 1810. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1840.... 433 133. A log cabin tavern at Zanesville, Ohio. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1840. 440 134. Melish’s map of Indiana in 1817. Showing territory al¬ ready acquired from Indians. — Modern copy of F. C. Amer. 1817. 443 135. License issued by Indiana permitting a citizen of the state to own and use a wheeled vehicle. — F. O. D. 1817 . 447 136. Chicago as it was in 1820. — 8vo. W. Amer. 1857. 451 137. Horseback travel into the Ohio Valley. — F. Lith. Amer. c. 1835. 453 138. Travel into the interior by wagon caravan. — 12mo. C. French, c. 1830. 460 139. Map of Indiana in 1820. Showing purchases of land from Indians. — Modern copy of F. C. Amer. 1820 463 140. Appearance of the wilderness lands of the interior at the time of their acquirement from the natives. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1840. 467 141. A quickly built log cabin set up by settlers in the interior for temporary shelter. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1840... 472 XXXV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 142. Finley’s map of Indiana in 1827. Showing the political organization of lands already bought. — Modern copy of F. C. Amer. 1827. 475 143. Map of the Michigan Road through Potawatomi terri¬ tory in northern Indiana. — Section of L. F. C. Amer. 1835. 480 144. Section of Mitchell’s map showing the conflicting juris¬ dictions of the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, Mis¬ sissippi and Alabama. — L. F. C. Amer. 1834. ... 487 145. Another section of same map, showing a similar condi¬ tion involving the Cherokee and Creek nations, Ala¬ bama and Georgia.. 489 146. Typical page from a later Indian trader’s account book. — 12mo. O. Ms. Amer. 1829-1830. 493 147. The Battle of Bad Axe, 1832. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856. 497 148. Baird’s description of the character of the interior settlers 501 149. Title page of Baird’s book containing the foregoing de¬ scription.— 12mo. Amer. 1834. 505 150. Melish’s 50-sheet map of the United States. — L. F. C. Amer. 1820. 509 151. A heavy New England stage-coach of 1815-1820.— Section of 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1830. 518 152. Title page of Hewett’s book on United States roads.— 12mo. Amer. 1825. 521 153. Melish’s map of the roads leading to Pittsburgh in 1812. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1812. 523 154. Melish’s map of the roads leading to New York City in 1826. — 8vo. C. Amer. 1826. 527 155. Captain Hall’s picture of a football-shaped stage-coach. — 4to. C. English, c. 1826. 530 156. Stage-coach entering Middletown, Connecticut. — L. 4to. C. Amer. c. 1830. 533 157. Coaches used for city passenger traffic on Broadway, New York City, in 1831. — F. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. Copy of L. F. Lith. Col. Amer. c. 1831. 535 158. Ticket of a New York City stage line. — Brass. Amer. c. 1830-1835. 539 XXXVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 159. Ticket of the Telegraph Line of New York City stages. — Brass. Amer. c. 1840-1845. 540 160. A coach of 1818 and a coach of 1828. — Sm. F. C. Amer. 1867, and Sm. F. W. Amer. 1867. Late impressions from originals engraved c. 1825 and 1830 . 541 161. Concord stage of the Phoenix Line running between Washington and Baltimore. — L. F. Lith. Amer. c. 1835. 545 162. Flat-topped coach, probably running between Philadel- ph ia and Baltimore. — L. F. W. Amer. c. 1835- 1840 . 548 163. A Concord stage in the Catskill Mountains. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1840. 554 164. Way-bill of a New York state stage-coach line. — Sm. F. O. D. Amer. 1841. 557 165. A stage-coach changing teams at a relay station. — 4to. W. Amer. c. .1855. 560 166. Left behind by the stage. — 8vo. M. Amer. c. 1840 . 561 167. A stage-coach mired on a mud road. — Section of F. Col. Lith. Amer. c. 1845-1850. 565 168. A stage-coach struck by a railway train. — Sm. F. O. Dr. Amer. Unsigned, c. 1845. 567 169. Stages before the Tontine Hotel, New Haven. — F. C. Amer. c. 1845. 569 170. Railway and stage-coach route to the Ohio valley.— 8vo. W. and T. Adv. Amer. 1852. 571 171. Tallmadge’s mail stage lines through Ohio and Ken¬ tucky.— 12mo. W. and T. Adv. Amer. 1837.. 573 172. Announcement of a ferry proprietor on the Vincennes- St. Louis stage road. — Sm. F. B. Amer. 1823 581 173. Announcement of a tavern landlord of Vincennes, Indi¬ ana.— Sm. F. B. Amer. 1825. 58+ 174. A notice to travellers by a ferry owner and storekeeper of Vincennes, Indiana. — F. B. Amer. 1825. 585 175. Title to Johnson’s Reports on the Sunday Mail Ques¬ tion. — L. F. B. Amer. 1829. 588 xxxvii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 176. Mail stage rules of a company running coaches between Vincennes and St. Louis. — Sm. F. B. Amer. c. 1826 . 589 177. Way-bill of a stage-coach line on the same road.— O. D. Amer. c. 1826. 591 178. Printed statement showing cost of stage-coach travel between principal towns.— 12mo. Amer. 1848... 595 179. A canal packet. The type of canal boat used exclusively for passenger traffic. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1830.. 602 180. Title page to the first American book on the subject of canals. — 4to. 1795. 603 181. Digging a deep cut on the Erie Canal. — 4to. Lith. Amer. 1825. 606 182. First boat built for the Erie Canal. — 8vo. W. and T. Amer. 1867. 607 183. New York City’s ticket of invitation to the Erie Canal Celebration. — Sm. C. Amer. 1825. 610 184. Private token struck in celebration of the digging of the Erie Canal. — Brass. Amer. 1823. 615 185. Entrance of the Erie Canal into the Hudson River at Albany. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1825. 623 186. Jumping aboard a canal packet from a bridge. — Sm. W. Amer. 1852. 626 187. Packets rounding a curve on the Erie Canal.— 12mo. C. Amer. c. 1832. 629 188. Passenger boat approaching a lock on the Erie Canal. — 4to. Lith. Amer. 1825. 632 189. Canal packet passing through a gorge at night. — 4to. S. Amer. c. 1838. 635 190. Going to bed on an Erie Canal packet. — Sm. W. Amer. 1852. 638 191. An Erie packet going through a deep cut. — 4to. Lith. Amer. 1825. 641 192. Passengers on a boat nearing Lockport, Erie Canal.— 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1835. 644 193. Western end of the Erie Canal. — 4to. C. English. c. 1826. 645 xxxviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 194. A family boat on the Erie Canal. — Sm. W. Amer. 1852 . 649 195. Interior view of an Erie Canal family boat. — Sm. W. Amer. 1852. 652 196. An inclined plane on the Morris Canal, in New Jersey. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1840. 658 197. Boat descending a Morris Canal inclined plane on its cradle.— 12mo. Lith. Amer. c. 1835. 662 198. Title page to Alspach’s Guide for the Schuylkill Canal. — 12mo. Amer. 1827. 665 199. Announcement preceding the running of a special canal boat. — Sm. W. and T. Adv. Amer. c. 1832... 669 200. The canal basin at Providence, Rhode Island. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1840. 671 201. Bill-head of the Merchants’ Line on the Delaware and Raritan Canal. — Sm. F. W. and T. Amer. 1843 679 202. A packet boat on the Miami Canal in Ohio. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1845. 682 203. Canal and river scene at North Bend, Ohio. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1845. 683 204. Printed schedule and rates of fare on the Illinois and Michigan Canal. — Sm. Adv. Amer. 1851. 686 205. Cartoon on the perils of canal travel. — Section of F. Lith. Amer. 1844. 688 206. A cartoon on the bunk system of sleeping accommoda¬ tions for travellers. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1845. .. . 693 207. Map of Pittsburgh just after it was connected with Philadelphia by a canal and railway route. — 8vo. C. Amer. 1834. 695 208. View of Pittsburgh and the Ohio River at the height of the water travel period. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1840 . 699 209. The great Pittsburgh Fire of 1845.—F. Lith. Col. Amer. 1845. 703 210. Two ancestors of the modern automobile. — Gordon’s car 12mo. W. Amer. 1829. Gurney’s car 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1848. 711 XXXIX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 211. A coal wagon on a primitive English railway. — 8vo. C. English, c. 1800. 721 212. A Welch stone quarry railway of 1808. — 8vo. C. English. 1808.... 723 213. The American Traveller Broadside. Probably the first picture of a railway printed in America. — L. F. W. andT. 1826. 725 214. An early printed description of the Baltimore and Ohio railway. — Sm. W. and T. Amer. c. 1830. 728 215. The New York American’s account of the English loco¬ motive tests of October, 1829. — L. F., March 11, 1830 . 731 216. Title page to Earle’s Treatise on Railroads. — 8vo. Amer. 1830. 733 217. Heading and title to Volume I, Number I, of the Rail¬ road Journal. — F. W. and T. January 2, 1832.. 737 218. A description of the new apparatus for travelling on railroads. — 8vo. W. and T. Amer. c. 1834.... 745 219. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad March. — F. C. Amer., July 4, 1828. 747 220. Rails and stone ties of the Camden and Amboy railroad in 1831, and of the Pennsylvania Portage railway in 1832. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern. 751 221. John Stevens’ T rail of 1830. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern . 755 222. Early American methods of railway track building. — Sm. F. C. Amer. 1832. 757 223. Manner of building part of the roadbed and track of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad in 1833. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern. 760 224. Roadbed and track structure of the Boston and Lowell railroad in 1834-1835. — Sm. W. English. 1838.. 763 225. Track of the Albany and Schenectady railway, 1837. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern. 765 226. First rail rolled in the United States: 1844. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern. 767 227. An early horse-drawn railway passenger car of the stage¬ coach type.— 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1830. 771 xl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 228. Speed test between a horse and the locomotive Tom Thumb, in 1830. —F. W. Amer. 1871 . 774 229. Two early railroad cars of the stage-coach form drawn by a locomotive.— 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1831.... 776 230. A sailing car on the Charleston and Hamburg road in 1829. —8vo. W. Amer. 1871 . 779 231. Passenger car propelled by a horse running on an endless platform. Tried on the Charleston and Hamburg road in 1829. —8vo. W. Amer. 1871. 784 232. Scene on the Charleston and Hamburg railway. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1830. 788 233. First public trip of a train on the Charleston and Ham¬ burg road.— F. W. Amer. 1871. 790 234. The cotton-bale and brass-band train on the Charleston and Hamburg line. — F. W. Amer. 1871. 793 235. First train of the Mohawk and Hudson railway. Brown’s silhouette of August 9, 1831. — F. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 801 236. Engraving intended to represent a scene on the Mohawk and Hudson railroad. — 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1838.. 804 237. View of a railway train drawn in part from imagination and hearsay. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1832. 807 238. First passenger cars and station of the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown railroad: 1831 or 1832. — F. Lith. Amer. c. 1832. 809 239. Carefully drawn sketch, by an amateur, showing Old Ironsides and the passenger car depicted in the preced¬ ing.— Sm. W. Amer. c. 1832. 813 240. Another print of Old Ironsides, pulling passenger cars of two different types. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1832 820 241. Scene showing a horse-drawn railway car of the stage¬ coach type in a Philadelphia street. —- 8vo. C. Amer. c. 1833-1834. 823 242. A train of the Pioneer Fast Line passing through a Pennsylvania town.— 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1842.. 828 243. A train on the West Chester railroad, Pennsylvania. — 8vo. M. Amer. c. 1838-1840. 831 xli LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 244. Railway inclined plane and small passenger car at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 833 245. First car on the New York and Harlem railway, or one nearly identical with it. — 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1832 . 839 246. A later style of passenger car on the New York and Harlem road. — Section of 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1838 844 247. Cartoon suggesting the unevenness of the track on the Harlem railroad. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1840-1842. 849 248. Another cartoon showing a train on the Harlem road entering a tunnel. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1840-1842 853 249. Later picture of a train on the Harlem line.— 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1848. 858 250. Scene on the Norwich and Worcester railway. — 4to. Lith. Amer. c. 1845. 861 251. First train on the Erie Railroad; 1837. — Modern copy of 12mo. S. Amer. 1837. 863 252. The Rogers machine works as they appeared in 1832. — 4to. S. Amer. 1886. The firm’s engraving of an early sketch. 866 253. The Baldwin locomotive works and early examples of its product. — F. M. Amer. c. 1840. 869 254. The Baltimore and Ohio railway locomotive York: built in 1831-1832. — Sm. W. Amer. 1855.... 873 255. The Sandusky; first locomotive in Ohio. — Sm. W. Amer. 1886. The builders’ engraving, from their early drawing. 875 256. A locomotive of the York type. Used on the Baltimore and Washington railway in 1837. — 8vo. C. Eng¬ lish. 1838. 877 257. The engine Hackensack. — F. Photograph. Amer. c. 1865 . 879 258. The locomotive Victory. — L. F. Lith. Col. Amer. c. 1850. 881 259. An Erie road engine of about 1850. — Sm. 4to. W. Amer. 1851. 887 260. The locomotive Volcano. — L. F. Lith. Col. Amer. c. 1855. 890 xlii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 261. Styles of American rails which superseded the flat bars originally laid on a majority of the early roads. — F. S. English, c. 1855. 893 262. Timber bridge construction employed by many pioneer American railways. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1845.... 896 263. A lookout pole. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1840. 899 264. Delivery envelope used for telegrams sent by the first Morse telegraph line. — Buff paper. Sm. W. Amer. c. 1850. 901 265. Two-story railway passenger car with cupola and flag. — 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1838. 903 266. A railway train whose locomotive is equipped with splint-brooms for sweeping the rails. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1845. 905 267. Two trains on the outskirts of Boston. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1840. 909 268. Style of passenger car in general use from about 1840 to 1850.— 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1845. 916 269. A train on the Hudson River road. — Sm. F. O. Dr. Amer. c. 1851. Signature, Philip Doane. . . . 917 270. An invention intended to protect railway travellers from locomotive smoke and sparks. — Sm. W. Amer. 1847. 923 271. Passenger train of about 1850-1855, behind an engine of a type used about 1842-1845. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1855. 925 272. Two passenger trains of the same period, in which all equipment is of the best and latest style. — L. F. Col. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 930 273. Interior view of a passenger car of the best sort. — 8vo. W. English. 1852. 932 274. A glimpse through a car window. — Sm. W. Amer. 1852 . 934 275. Night scene in a railway passenger car. — Sm. W. Amer. 1858. 937 276. Traveller’s ticket from New York City to Buffalo by steamboat, canal and railway. — O. D. W. and T. Amer. 1831. 940 xliii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 277. First ticket of the New York and Harlem railroad.— Copper-bronze. Die-cut. Amer. 1832. 944 278. A later metallic ticket of the New York and Harlem road. Good for passage northward to Yorkville.— Pewter. Amer. c. 1840. 945 279. Pass issued by an early Pennsylvania railway. — O. D. Cardboard. T. Amer. c. 1835-1840. 948 280. Season ticket on the Boston and Worcester railroad. — O. D. Blue glazed cardboard. T. Amer. 1857. 950 281. A railway conductor’s business card. — Rubber. Amer. c. 1860. 955 282. Season time-tables of the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown railway. — Sm. cardboard. T. Amer. 1847-1848 . 957 283. Time-table of the New York and Harlem road. — Sm. B. T. Amer. 1847. 959 284. Printed announcement by a firm of forwarding agents and stage-coach proprietors soliciting business to the South. — 8 vo. Adv. Amer. 1840. 961 285. Printed announcement of a line of steamboats running to the South in competition with the preceding. — 8vo. Adv. Amer. 1840. 967 286. Printed announcement of a stage-coach and steamboat line operating in the South. — 8vo. Adv. Amer. 1840 .«. 971 287. Time schedule and announcement of the Central Rail¬ road of Georgia.— 12mo. Adv. Amer. 1852.... 979 288. Schedule and announcement of Leech’s Line between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. — 12mo. Adv. Amer. 1851 . 981 289. Time-table of the Hudson River road. — F. B. on blue paper. Amer. 1852. 983 290. Announcement of Beers’ Temperance Hotel, Washing¬ ton.— Adv. Amer. 1851. 985 291. View of lower Manhattan Island, New York City.— 8vo. S. Amer. 1850. 989 292. First page of the printed address urging the building of the Hudson River road. — 8vo. Amer. 1842. 993 xliv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 293. Pulling a passenger car of the New Haven road through New York City by horses. — 4to. W. English. 1852 . 997 294. A similar scene during the winter season. — 8vo. W. Amer. 1857 . 1000 295. Assembling a north-bound train in New York City at the spot where the engine was attached. — 8vo. W. Amer. 1857 . 1002 296. A New York City ferry boat. — Sm. F. W. Amer. c. 1855 . 1004 297. First printed pictorial suggestion for an elevated railroad in New York City.— 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1842.. 1010 298. A cartoonist’s idea of an elevated railroad in Broadway, New York City. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1842. 1013 299. Appearance of the first actual elevated railway in New York City. — Sm. W. Amer. Modern. 1015 300. An omnibus for city passenger traffic. — Sm. F. W. Amer. c. 1855-1860. 1017 301. An early New Orleans street-car. — 4to. W. Amer. 1855 . 1019 302. Street-car designed by Alexander Easton about 1858. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. 1859... 1022 303. Two early street-cars in a Boston thoroughfare. — 4to. W. Amer. 1856. 1025 304. An omnibus on sled-runners, used in Boston as substitute for a winter street-car. — 4to. W. Amer. c. 1857. 1029 305. Another street-car designed by Alexander Easton about 1858. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. 1859. 1032 306. Explosion of the steamboat Helen McGregor. — 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1842. 1038 307. Explosion of the steamboat Brilliant. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856. 1040 308. Wreck of the steamboat Swallow. — F. Lith. Amer. 1845 . 1043 309. Burning of the steamboat Lexington. — L. F. Lith. Col. Amer. 1840. 1046 310. Concussion of two railway trains.— 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1842. 1048 xlv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 311. Accident to a railroad train in the Alleghany Mountains. — 12mo. Col. Lith. English. 1853. 1049 312. Collapse of an incomplete timber railroad bridge.— 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1856. 1053 313. Accident on the Camden and Amboy railroad. One of the last of the pictorial Catastrophe Broadsides. — F. Lith. Amer. 1855. 1055 314. Collapse of a New York Central railroad bridge.— 8vo. W. Amer. 1858. 1058 315. Cartoon following the introduction of locomotives on the Harlem railroad. — 12mo. W. Amer. 1839.. 1064 316. Cartoon indicating the unconcern with which destruc¬ tion of life by locomotives was at first viewed. — 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1840. 1066 317. Cartoon suggesting the need of reducing the number of railway collisions. — Sm. W. Amer. c. 1850.... 1069 318. A cartoon proposing the reduction of collisions by tying railroad directors on the locomotives. — Sm. 4to. W. Amer. c. 1858. 1073 319. An early Kentucky railroad train. — Sm. C. Amer. , 1837 . 1076 320. Louisville’s stock certificate showing the city’s part own¬ ership of an early railway. — F. O. D. 1835. 1078 321. Picture of a railway train used on the notes of an early Michigan bank. — Sm. C. Amer. 1833. 1081 322. A train on the Erie and Kalamazoo railroad. — 12mo. W. Amer. c. 1865. Copy of a Sm. F. Lith. c. 1837 . 1086 323. Printed announcement of the Baltimore and Ohio rail¬ road and a stage-coach company. — Sm. Adv. Amer. 1853 . 1089 324. Cleveland’s railway station in 1854. — 12mo. Col. Lith. Amer. 1854.:. 1093 325. Invitation ticket to the reception ball of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway. — Cardboard. C. Amer. 1865 . 1098 326. Cincinnati’s railroad celebration of 1857. — Sm. F. W. Amer. 1857 . 1103 xlvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 327. Script issued by the Burnet House, of Cincinnati. — O. D. Lith. Amer. c. 1861. 1106 328. A view of Detroit’s water front.and railroad terminals. — 8vo. S. German, c. 1865. 1107 329. Published table showing the time consumed by a jour¬ ney from New York City to Chicago in 1848.— 12mo. Amer. 1848. 1109 330. A Chicago railroad station and passenger train. — 4to. W. Amer. 1857. 1114 331. A bird’s-eye view of Chicago. — 8vo. S. German. c. 1865. 1117 332. Announcement by six railroads that travel between New York City and St. Louis by rail had become possible. — 12mo. W. and T. Adv. Amer. 1857.. 1121 333. A view of the city of St. Louis. — Sm. F. Lith. Col M German, c. 1856. 1127 334. Mouth of the Missouri River, with flatboats and steam¬ boats.— Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856.... 1131 335. A large Indian canoe of the West.— 12mo. Lith. Amer. c. 1835. 1134 336. Skin ferry boats of the Flathead and other Indians. — 8vo. Col. Lith. Amer. c. 1855... 1138 337. A small steamboat of the western rivers. — 4to. Lith. Amer. c. 1857. 1142 338. Camp of an overland military expedition in the West. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856. 1145 339. An Indian village of the West. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German. c. 1856. 1148 340. Yankton Sioux watching a steamboat on the Missouri River. — F. W. German, c. 1855. 1151 341. Fort Benton, on the upper Missouri. — 8vo. Col. Lith. Amer. c. 1861. 1155 342. Native horseman of the plains. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1845 . 1163 343. An outpost bull bison on guard. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1858 .. 1166 344. Overland emigrants passing through an Indian village. — 8 vo. W. Amer. c. 1852. 1171 xlvii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 345. A wagon train attacked by Indians. — F. S. Amer. c. 1855 . 1174 346. Disaster to a wagon bound for Pike’s Peak. — F. W. Amer. c. 1858. 1177 347. Overland emigrants’ wagons passing Fort Laramie. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1850. 1179 348. Wagon train approaching Fort Mohave. — F. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 1183 349. Independence, Missouri, during the period of overland travel by wagons. — Sm. F. S. German, c. 1853 1191 350. View of Kansas City in its earliest days. — 4to. S. Amer. c. 1850. 1193 351. A view of Kansas City in 1872. — Sm. W. Amer. 1872 . 1196 352. A wind wagon of the prairies. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1856 . 1198 / 353. A prairie fire. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856 1201 354. Manner of conveying a wagon across a western river too deep to be forded. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1858.. 1203 355. A wagon train descending a hill. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1855 . 1207 356. Long wagon train making its way through a valley. — 8 vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1855. 1210 357. Wagon train in the Black Hills. — 12mo. Lith. Col. Amer. 1876 . 1214 358. Taking a wagon through a Wyoming Canon.— 12mo. Lith. Col. Amer. 1876. 1217 359. A horse-litter of the West. — 12mo. W. Amer. 1859. 1220 360. St. Paul in its early years. — Sm. F. Lith. Amer. c. 1858 . 1223 361. The Rubber Stamp Map of the Northwest. — L. F. Lith. Amer. 1864. 1225 362. Dog-sled of the far West. — F. W. German. 1862... 1228 363. Announcement of a stage-coach company of the North¬ west.— 8vo. Adv. Amer. 1872. 1233 xlviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 364 Nauvoo, Illinois, as it appeared before its evacuation by the Mormons. — Sm. F. Lith. Col. German, c. 1856 . 1239 365. Ruins of the Mormon Temple at Nauvoo. — F. S. English. 1855. 1241 366. A Mormon wagon train on the Oregon trail crossing the Missouri at Council Bluffs in 1853. — F. S. English. 1855 . 1245 367. Mormon wagon train crossing the Loup Fork ferry on the Oregon trail. — F. S. English. 1855. 1249 358. An early view of a street in Salt Lake City. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1852. 1251 369. A pack-train caravan near Huerfano Butte, New Mex¬ ico.— 4to. S. Amer. c. 1860. 1255 370. Wagons halted near the Red River. — 8vo. S. Ger¬ man. c. 1853. 1259 371. Caravan on the Santa Fe trail, approaching the city of Santa Fe. — 8vo. S. Amer. c. 1836. 1262 372. A steamboat in Mohave Canon. — Sm. F. S. Amer. c. 1865 . 1265 373. Title page of Sherwood’s Pocket Guide to California. — 8vo. Amer. 1849. 1273 374. A scene in St. Louis during the overland migrations. — 8vo. W. Amer. c. 1856 . 1275 375. Scene of the tragedy at Donner Lake in 1846-1847.— 12mo. W. Amer. 1870. From a photograph taken about fifteen years after the event. 1277 376. Family crossing the plains on the way to California. —- F. W. Amer. 1852. 1279 377. Sutter’s Fort as it appeared in 1849. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1852. 1281 378. Sacramento, California, as it appeared in 1850. — Sm. F. S. German, c. 1856. 1283 379. Wagons of the gold seekers moving between Sacramento and the mines. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1852. 1285 380. A miner as he appeared at work. — 8vo. W. Amer. 1852 . 1289 xlix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NUMBER PAGE 381. Interior view of a California miner’s cabin. — 4to. W. Amer. c. 1855. 1293 382. The Fremont Hotel in San Francisco. — 4to. W. Ger¬ man. 1850 . 1295 383. Views of San Francisco in 1848 and 1849. — Each 12mo. Col. Lith. Amer. c. 1853. 1300 384. Announcement of a stage-coach line running between San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California. — 8vo. Adv. Amer. 1858. 1303 385. San Diego in 1849. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1850.. 1307 386. Travelling through Texas by pack-train.—8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1858. 1309 387. Ferry across the Pecos River, in Texas. — 8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1858. 1311 388. A small overland stage wagon of the period before 1858. —8vo. W. Amer. 1881.. . 1313 389. Announcement of the Overland Mail Company. — 4to. Adv. Amer. 1858. 1315 390. Coach of the Overland Mail Company ready to depart from San Francisco. — Sm. F. W. Amer. 1858... 1317 391. Scene during the surveys attending the selection of a route for the first transcontinental railway. —8vo. Lith. Amer. c. 1863. 1323 392. View of Omaha just after the completion of the first Pacific railroad. — Sm. W. Amer. 1872. 1326 393. A construction train on the Central Pacific road. — 12mo. W. Amer. 1870. 1331 394. A construction train on the Union Pacific road. — 8vo. W. Amer. 1870. 1334 395. Meeting of the rails and engines at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869.— 12mo. W. Amer. 1870. 1339 396. A transcontinental train halted by snowdrifts on the prairies. — Section of F. Lith. Amer. c. 1872. 1343 397. Interior view of a snow-shed on the first Pacific rail¬ way.— 12mo. W. Amer. 1870. 1347 398. A transcontinental train in the Sierra Nevada Moun¬ tains.— L. F. W. Amer. 1870. 1350 1 LIST OF MAPS NUMBER PAGE 399. Scene in a Chicago railway station after the continent was spanned by steam transportation. — L. F. W. Amer. 1870 . 1354 4-00. Charles Hamilton, American aviator, flying from New York City to Philadelphia on the first aeroplane flight made in accordance with an announced schedule. — Photograph, June 13, 1910. 1367 List of Maps J t. Folding map of important early overland routes made or used by the pioneers east of the Mississippi River dur¬ ing the period between 1750 and 1820. — Drawn for this work. 152 2. Folding map of the principal overland caravan routes used during the Caucasian penetration of the region west of the Mississippi River during the period be¬ tween 1843 and 1868. The roads listed in Appendix L may be traced on this chart, without regard for the sys¬ tem of numeration embodied in the map. — A photo¬ graph of Ravenstein’s map, contained in Burton’s edi¬ tion of Marcy’s “The Prairie Traveller.” Sm. F. Lith. English. 1863 . 1128 li A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA CHAPTER I A SUMMARY OF THE GENERAL FEATURES OF THE SUBJECT AND AN INDICATION OF THE METHODS AND PURPOSES HEREAFTER FOLLOWED IN ITS DISCUSSION T HE story of the upbuilding of our present methods of travel and transportation is not a record of the de¬ velopment of a system for the carrying of commodities. It is a history of the devices originated by the people primarily for their personal use and comfort in moving from place to place. Only after the early population had occupied some new region by means of the crude and primitive travel methods then in use were there any com¬ modities to move or men to move them, and not until then, after each successive surge of population into fresh terri¬ tory, were existing methods of human travel expanded, or new ones brought into being, for the purpose of also transporting the material wealth those pioneers had created. The pioneer, no matter of what date or locality, was always a traveller before he was a producer or shipper of goods, and the common experience of the people, gained on their journeys, was — save in one instance — the basis on which future permanent routes and methods of travel 1 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA were planned and created. The one exception to this manner of evolution lay in the memorable demonstration that steam could be successfully used for the propulsion of travel vehicles. It was an instance wherein genius and reason overshadowed experience and precedent. America has witnessed the introduction and develop¬ ment of much that has been permanently adopted into the travel methods of the world. That this is so is not, in all probability, due chiefly to the genius or inventive ability of the nation as a first cause. Its underlying reason, rather, can be traced to the extent and configuration of the country, to the period during which its population as¬ sumed goodly size, to certain political events of its his¬ tory, and to a universal restlessness and desire for haste which for a long time has been so characteristic of its people. For nearly a hundred and fifty years from the estab¬ lishment of the first permanent settlements along the At¬ lantic coast there were practically no improvements made in the manner of moving over the face of the land. Almost all progress, in that respect, was confined to improving Indian trails which led into the wilderness, joining a newly-established farm or settlement to its neighbors, or turning old pack-horse paths into crude wagon roads as the settlements gradually grew into towns. During all that time the trend of travel, generally speaking, was north and south. True, there were a few adventurous spirits who plunged into the unknown and sometimes came back, bringing tales of distances beyond comprehen¬ sion, of never-ending woods, of unknown mountains, riv¬ ers or lakes. But that was not travel. That was adven¬ ture, hunting or sheer folly, and the population, clinging * to its little strip of a hundred and fifty miles in width A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA along the coast, never seriously considered giving battle to the vastness which brooded beside them. Yet those early Americans were commencing the con¬ quest, though they did not know it. Each new farm es¬ tablished a little farther on, each new child born, helped toward the far-distant victory; but their chief contribu¬ tion to the contest in which nature was at last to be de¬ feated by man’s demand for movement in speed and com¬ fort lay in a gradual change in the character of the people themselves. As generation after generation slipped by, the separation of related families and an increase in the petty business affairs of the population multiplied the small journeys between different settlements and colonies. The time of the individual man became more valuable. The restlessness and hurry of the modern American, his desire for speed and a short-cut to his destination, found its small beginning. Gradually, also, the attitude of the people toward the wilderness changed. It still remained—as do its present fragments—a thing of awe, but it was better comprehended and less feared. Then was introduced into the problem a political ele¬ ment which had no visible relevancy at the time, but whose relationship to the subject, from this latter-day stand¬ point, is apparent. The revolution against England, the confederation of the colonies that followed its success, and the acquirement of the immense region known as the Louisiana Purchase gave to the people a lesson in the necessity of united action, a better understanding of the common welfare, and a gradual realization that they had, for a task, the subjugation of a continent. The period during and immediately following these political incidents in America marked the beginning of a new social, intellectual and industrial era throughout the 3 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA civilized world. All that had happened theretofore, for a long time, was practically the last chapter of the Mid¬ dle Ages. Modern life as we know it, and the use of human creative energy in a way designed to transform 1.—Indians fashioning log canoes by means of fire and tools. Craft of this sort were the first vehicles used by English speaking white colonists in America. the circumstances of mankind, began then. It was the time of the great awakening; the birth of mechanical power; the beginning of an epoch whose unbelievable achievements would drive the mind to madness were thev y not, happily, so commonplace. We are scarcely human beings any more — merely spectators of a drama of de¬ velopment which has no visible end, and whose actors make up the plot as they go along. From about 1785 until 1870 old methods and condi¬ tions went to the scrap heap, and the world, as we bump 4 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA against it, was built all over again. And in no other one feature of man’s affairs, perhaps, were greater or more extraordinary changes made than in his manner of travel¬ ling. In the revolution thus accomplished America, for obvious reasons, took a part that was very prominent. There were then but two continents — Europe and Amer¬ ica— whose peoples found within themselves the neces¬ sity of change. Africa, Australia, South America and Asia were not ready. They were to escape the period of experiment and to install, at a later day, the tested and perfected systems brought to completion elsewhere. America had an advantage over Europe in that her prob¬ lem was a larger one, and presented conditions more prim¬ itive and complex. Greater necessities resulted in bigger performances. To this may also be added the fact that Europe presented, to the impending evolution in travel, a multitude of comparatively small states whose size, pe¬ culiar geographical relationships and political quarrels definitely prevented the adoption of a uniform, conti¬ nental system of communication development. America, on the contrary, offered in her compact mass and shape an ideal opportunity for the planning and methodical crea¬ tion of such a system. But she did not see the chance, and threw it away. Twice — first when steamboats came into general use, and again in the early years of railroad build¬ ing— those who had the shaping of public affairs failed to see the portent of what was taking place, and the petty jealousies of individual states were permitted to warp and disfigure the results of those vital years. Viewing the history of the whole American period under discussion — from about 1630 until 1870—it seems as though the clearest perception of the significance of events and of public necessity and intent was to be found most quickly, S A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA not in the minds of those whom history names as leaders of men, but in the collective understanding of the multi¬ tude. In their attitude toward the national need for travel facilities, during nearly all the big and important periods of the story, those famous ones have held aloof, remaining dull to opportunity and laggard in perform¬ ance until the onrush of the nameless thousands swept them, like a torrent, into tardy action. Yet there were times when the multitude, as well as the head men of the country, could not understand its opportunities. A somewhat comprehensive review is necessary—as far as the text of the record is concerned — to indicate the travel conditions existing during the first hundred and sixty years of the national history, together with the hu¬ man experiences and social life which accompanied them. After those things have been considered the narrative need concern itself only with the comparatively short but im¬ portant epoch between 1788-9 and 1868-9. During that interval of eighty years the transformation from archaic conditions to the vehicles we use to-day was brought about. Its chief features are better known than are those of the former era. The changes made within the last forty years have been, with few exceptions, refine¬ ments or better forms of what already existed; inevitable outgrowths of methods that preceded them. They do not call for extended comment. The pictorial part of the review must necessarily be devoted principally to the eighty years during which the revolution in methods of transportation occurred. It is but reasonable to expect, in studying any epoch of human advancement, that certain things which took place during its continuance will stand out with prominence. That is true in this case, and we find in considering the 6 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA development of travel in America and the relation of such development to the national progress that there were five events, or movements, within the years discussed, which occupy in its history positions very similar to those held by decisive battles in the story of a nation’s political life. The five events were: The governmental organization of the Ohio country and the Northwest Territory, and the beginning of a general migration to those regions, in 1787-1789; A general public recognition of the value of steam as a means of propulsion, in 1807-1809; The beginning of the railway building period, in 1828- 1829; / Discovery of gold in the West and the general rush across the plains, in 1848-1849; Completion of the first transcontinental railway, in 1869. It is an interesting circumstance that these movements, each of which was largely due to the attitude and active participation of the whole population, followed one an¬ other at intervals of almost exactly twenty years. Whether or not they were merely a series of coincidences, or whether they had their source in some deeper condition that re¬ sulted in successive periodic eruptions of mental and phys¬ ical energy affecting a whole people, may be left to ex¬ perts in the psychology of a growing nation. However ably the phenomenon may be explained on the basis of chance, there will, perhaps, remain a lingering notion that it was not wholly due to accident. The years that witnessed the slow transformation from primitive to modern conditions contained, of course, much more than is indicated by these five events. They are but later landmarks from which we may most easily take our 7 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA bearings from time to time. Nor should we fail to re¬ member that progress, in the upbuilding of our present system, did not take place with uniformity based on the lapse of years. It often happened — almost always hap¬ pened, in fact — that some one section of the country was far ahead of the others in its travel facilities. This was due either to earlier settlement, disparity of population, inherited customs of the people or to the physical condi¬ tion of ths contrasted localities. The days of the stage¬ coach, for instance, persisted in the West in full vigor 2.—A white traveller in a log canoe. Such a boat was propelled by the use of a rude paddle or a pole. for a generation after that vehicle had disappeared from the eastern states. Only within the last few years have conditions become substantially the same throughout the whole three million square miles of continental area. 8 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA The story of our upward growth from the dugout canoe to the floating hotel of to-day, from the dog-sled and Conestoga wagon to the thunderbolts that we call ex¬ press trains, wonderful as the progress has been, is not one which inspires us with pride alone. There are tragedies in it, blunders and blindness and mistakes innumerable. With few precedents to serve as guides, and sometimes with no precedents at all, the problem was not like the task of an architect who draws a plan and then builds his house accordingly. In this case there was no plan, for never at any stage of the task did there appear a man who was big enough both to picture the needs of the future and to compel the attention of the public mind to them. A few men, from time to time, had visions of those things that now exist in concrete form, and many others com¬ manded the confidence of the people in matters of dif¬ ferent nature, but it did not happen that those two quali¬ ties were ever combined in one early personality inter¬ ested in the travel and transportation facilities of the nation. The development of the system from its primitive conditions, as a consequence, was in large degree a history of feverish energy based upon incomplete experiment; the discarding of mistakes; shortsightedness; jealousy; and a lack of unity and coherence among the various parts of the system as they were at first created. When rail¬ roads came into use, for instance, the distance between New York and Washington was at first spanned by sev¬ eral companies, each of which adopted a track-width different from that of the others in order that the cars of one road could not run on the rails of its rivals. Some states would not permit railroads incorporated by them to cross their boundary lines into adjoining states. 9 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Since this preliminary chapter is, in a sense, a series of suggestions designed as a glue to hold together all that comes after, it is desirable to refer to one other general aspect of the subject. Several times within the last hun¬ dred and twenty-five years the development of our travel system has been affected — usually to its serious disad¬ vantage— by the operation of certain well recognized phases of American character. The traits that have had such an influence are the tendency of the public mind to concentrate all its attention on some one subject of spec¬ tacular or popular interest at the moment, to the exclu¬ sion of other matters often more deserving of thought; an intensity of public feeling which, when once aroused, fos¬ ters either a general optimism or corresponding pessi¬ mism; and the restlessness and desire for hurry at any cost that has been so prominent and so steadily increasing for about a century. The exhibition of these traits has varied, and still does, in different periods, regions and cities. More than once it has happened that some circumstance or experi¬ ence of easily recognized importance to the whole people has had a powerful effect, for a considerable time, in ex¬ citing one or more of those qualities. And whenever such an occurrence or condition of public affairs has coincided with a critical period in the history of our travel system the effect has always been noticeable, and often strange — from our present viewpoint. Sometimes the public mind has been made incapable of seeing an opportunity which, if realized and grasped, would have saved many years. Again, when under the sway of an era of happy-go- lucky optimism, the people have tolerated or accepted much discomfort and danger in going from place to place, only to alter their attitude, suddenly manifest their dis- 10 3.—Larg e bark canoes were sometimes employed in bays and along the coast. Also showing a sailing vessel made by laying a deck on the transverse timbers which united two canoes. This principle was afterward used in small craft on interior rivers. See illustration No. 89. 11 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA pleasure at such undesirable conditions, and suggest the ending of them forthwith. That particular series of events is constantly recurring even until to-day. But the imposition, public awakening and compelling of drastic though necessary reform which is now occasionally apparent is attended with less of popular outcry than formerly accompanied such situations. We have become more self-contained, and, in addition, the transportation system in all its ramifications has learned that the comfort and safety of the traveller must be considered before all else. The subject to which these pages are devoted is the foundation whereon the country, considered as a social and industrial organization, has been built. A few years ago — until as late a date as 1806 — the six or seven mil¬ lion people of America were contentedly visiting their friends, or moving about on business, in flatboats, dog- sleds, stage-coaches, strange wagons or canoes. Those were the only vehicles of travel and when they were not available, as was very often the case, the traveller walked or else rode upon a horse. To go from the Atlantic sea- coast to such remote regions as Cincinnati or St. Louis or Fort Dearborn — now Chicago — in those days meant a journey of many weary weeks, with possibly the loss of a scalp. Such a thing as a trip across the continent and back was not within the range of thought of the ordinary man. A vast undertaking like that, requiring years for its accomplishment, demanded the resources of the national government and an elaborate exploring expedition. When at last it was performed, the successful making of a transcontinental journey became the subject of a uni¬ versal interest and acclaim. Books were written about it. To-day we are annoyed if we are late for breakfast in 12 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Chicago or Cincinnati after having left the Atlantic coast in the middle of the previous afternoon, and the railway apologizes, and returns part of our money. Also we are ninety millions instead of seven, and by the waters of the Pacific sit great cities but five days separated from their sisters of the East. The stage-coach, canal-boat, canoe, dog-sled and prai¬ rie schooner, and the archaic steamboat and railway train also, have become fossils in the geology of modern life. But the tale of the part they played in the growth and development of the country still remains. It is the one story written by all Americans in collaboration. In this present realm of four-day ocean steamships, of trains that dive beneath rivers or plunge through a thou¬ sand miles in twenty hours, of subways, motor-cars, sub¬ marine boats, and with the flying machine just beginning to dot the sky, we are privileged to remember, if we choose, that once upon a time the express boats on the canals maintained a speed of three miles an hour for day after day, and that the Pioneer Fast Line advertised it would rush its passengers through from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in four days — and often nearly kept its word. CHAPTER II THE CONDITION AND APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY IN EARLY DAYS — DIFFICULTY OF TRAVEL THROUGH THE VAST FOREST — INDIAN TRAILS THE FIRST MEANS AND BASIS OF LAND MOVEMENT BY THE WHITES — TRAVEL BY WATER PREFERRED WHENEVER POSSIBLE — HOW THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF CANOES WERE MADE AND USED O NE of the best records of the difficulties and methods of American travel in the early days is contained in a few words of a lately discovered document written in 1694. 1 In that year Benjamin Fletcher, Governor of His Majesty’s Province of New York, was planning an attack on the French in Canada, and he called on his subordi¬ nates for a report which should show the strength of the enemy and by what route and method of travel he could most easily reach them. The answer to Governor Fletcher’s demand, recently brought to light, was written by William Pinhorne and N. Bayard at New York, on July 25 of the year named, and in it they said: “It is Impossible to march with any party of men to Canada by Land, either in winter or summer, but they must passe a Considerable Part of ye way over ve Lake, 2 ye Land on each side being extream steep and Rocky, 1 Now in the New York Historical Society’s collection. 8 Lake Champlain. 14 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA mountains or els a meer morasse cumbred with under¬ wood, where men cannot goe upright, but must creep throu Bushes for whole days’ marches, and impossible for horses to goe at any time of ye year.” And in a letter written by Deputy Governor Hinckley of Plymouth Colony, about 1680, in which he appeals to the English officials in London for certain favors, he argues that the colony is entitled to what he asks because it was “the first that broke the ice, and underwent ye brunt, at our own charge, for the enlargement of his Majesties’ dominions in this heretofore most howling wilderness, amidst wild men and wild beasts.” In these two quotations may be found the essential out¬ lines of the conditions under which the people of America in those days, and for long afterward, lived and moved about the country. It was, indeed, a “most howling wil¬ derness,” so immense in its extent and unconquerable in its aspect that for more than a century and a half the white population sat, helpless and afraid, along a little strip of seacoast but a hundred and fifty miles in width. Yet the interior of North America is more easily accessible for travel, when approached and entered from the Atlantic seaboard, than is the corresponding region of any other continent. There are few descriptions that were written in those very early days expressly to show the methods and hard¬ ships of travel. No doubt the lack of such narratives is due to the state of mind revealed by every people, in every period, toward those things that, to them, are com¬ monplace and familiar. The Americans of two hundred and fifty years ago prepared manv long and careful ac¬ counts of such things as they saw but once in a lifetime, but of records far more interesting to us, records illumi- 15 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA nating the every-day conditions by which they were surrounded, they left but little that was set down with his torical purpose. Most of our knowledge of the sort has been pieced together from fragments such as diaries and personal letters that have survived by accident. The report to Governor Fletcher condenses into a few words certain conditions which dominated all travel in America from the time of its first permanent English oc- 4.—Indians building bark canoes in the forest. They were made from the bark of the birch, spruce or elm. The first white settlers at once adopted this conveyance, and used it in their westward advance for more than two centuries. cupation until shortly before the Revolution. Those con¬ ditions were the use of water routes wherever possible; the uselessness of horses except near settlements or on beaten paths; the necessity of performing extended jour¬ neys on foot; and the extreme difficulty of progress 16 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA through the woods. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River — excepting some open country in the region now in part occupied by Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois — the land was covered by a continuous and al¬ most unbroken forest. This wilderness was a thousand miles in extent from east to west, and about as long from north to south. Through it, in every direction, ran count¬ less rivers and their tributaries. Now this genuine primeval forest of America was very different in its character and appearance from any of the so-called primeval American woods of to-day. Centuries of alien human companionship affect the nature of forests in a marked degree. Those that still remain, even though covering areas never swept bare by the hand of man, have become, in a sense, civilized. The bulk of the wilderness, as it was until about 1790, was composed of trees that were from two to five feet in diameter. In those regions where the trees grew close together the girth gave way to height, and many reached a hundred and fifty feet into the air. Not until a tree was some six or eight feet in diameter was it considered a large one and those that attracted the attention of travellers, and were meas¬ ured, were ten, twelve and sometimes even fifteen feet in thickness. There are numerous records of such monsters in the region east of the Mississippi now occupied by the Middle States. 1 The earth beneath these huge growths was cumbered with fallen trees of all sizes and in all stages of decay. The hurricanes that now do occasional damage to towns and farms regularly wrought their havoc in the wilder¬ ness, and the confusion and tangle of the forest after the 1 On Manhattan Island, New York City, there still survives one of those ancient •monarchs. It is a tulip tree about ten feet in diameter at the ground, and six feet thick at the height of a man. 17 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA visit of such a storm can easily be pictured. Up from the earth made rich by ages of decayed vegetation sprang all manner of thickets and similar small growths that some¬ times choked the lower spaces and were frequently bound together by a snarl of vines tough as wires or as big as a man’s wrist. The rains or melting snows left such soil very slowly, and that is why there are frequent references, in olden records, to swamps or morasses which then occu¬ pied sections that have long since become dry and solid ground. Such was the wilderness. It climbed the hills and mountains with its three hundred species of trees, and, stopping only for the passage of a river, resumed its sway upon the farther bank and still marched on. The little streams, completely covered, flowed under archways amid somber shadows. The human habitants of this vast and gloomy region, in which the sun’s rays in places never reached the ground, were two or three hundred thousand copper-colored na¬ tives, 1 whose numbers were too small to have made any impression on it, even had they been so inclined. But they were not so purposed. Instead, they were peculiarly in harmony and sympathy with their home, and desired that it should remain always as they knew it. The few agricultural clearings made by some of the Indians who lived north of the Ohio River, by the Iroquois in what is now central New York state, and elsewhere, were trivial gashes amid the universal woods. When the Indians travelled they moved by water if their purpose made it possible. For their land travel they created paths leading from one stream to another. In going across country they had a wonderful faculty for establishing routes that were, 1 Early estimates of the number of the Indian population were much exaggerated. 18 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA in an economic sense, the best that could be chosen. An Indian overland trail always led the traveller to his desti¬ nation in less time, or with fewer physical obstacles to overcome, than any other course that could be selected 5.—White men travelling through the wilderness by bark canoe. The craft is about to be unloaded and carried overland around the rapids. between the two points which it connected. Practically the whole present-day system of travel and transportation in America east of the Mississippi River, including many turnpikes, is based upon, or follows, the system of forest paths established by the Indians hundreds of years ago. These Indian trails — the corner-stone of land travel in America — were from twelve to eighteen inches in width, and sometimes, when they led through regions where the native travel was particularly heavy and long continued, were worn a foot deep by generations of soft 19 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA moccasins. Along such native highways the trained run¬ ners of the Indians are believed to have covered, on some few occasions, almost a hundred miles between sunrise and sunset. Centuries after their paths were laid out a white man named Nathaniel Hawthorne spoke of the use of them made by his fellow white men of Massachusetts, and he said: “The forest track trodden by the hob-nailed shoes of these sturdy Englishmen has now a distinctness which it never could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many moccasins. It goes onward from one clearing to another, here plunging into a shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sunshine, but everywhere showing a decided line along which human interests 1 have begun to hold their career . . . And the Indians coming from their distant wigwams to view the white man’s settlement marvel at the deep track which he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a flitting presentiment that this heavy tread will find its way over all the land.” Hawthorne, had he not the mind of a poet, would have put the idea more bluntly than he did, for it was no mere flitting presentiment that the Indian of his day held. It was a realization of the inevitable, acknowledged with a despair that was felt, though unspoken. When Peter Wilson, a Cayuga chief and very able Indian, visited New York City in 1847 he delivered an address before the New York Historical Society in which he referred to this same subject. “The Empire State, as you love to call it,” were the words of the red chief, “was once laced by our trails from Albany to Buffalo; trails that we have trod for cen¬ turies; trails worn so deep by the feet of the Iroquois that they became your roads of travel, as your possessions grad- 1 White men’s interests is what he meant. 20 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ually ate into those of my people. Your roads still tra¬ verse those same lines of communication which bound one part of the Long House 1 to the other.” The forest roads of the natives — first aids to such land travel as was attempted in early days by the white population of America — were not the only contribution made by the red men to the methods of the newcomers. From them, also, was taken the earliest form of water craft. The canoe, as used by the Indians and at once adopted by the whites, was of two very different forms. One was made from a log of suitable size, and the other from the bark of trees, especially the birch, spruce, or elm. The use of these two types, both by the Indians and afterward by white invaders, depended on the nature of the waters to be navigated, the desire for speed, and the frequent necessity of making portages from one stream to another. To some extent also the type was a geographical one, since the birch tree from the bark of which the best kind of bark canoe was made was not so plentiful in the South as in the North. For a heavy wooden canoe a fallen log was selected that, while still entirely sound, had be¬ come somewhat seasoned. Sometimes a standing tree was chosen by the Indians and felled by means of hatchets or fire. A section of the trunk from fifteen to thirty feet long and about three feet in diameter was then cut out and ele¬ vated from the ground, for convenience in carrying on the work. The log was shaped and hollowed by fire and cutting implements, and a very strong and serviceable, though rough and slow moving craft was obtained. 2 Such canoes were only adapted for lakes or single rivers. They were not taken overland from one water to another. In fashioning the much more graceful, mobile and 1 The Iroquois name for their Confederacy. 2 Such a canoe became known by the colonists as a “pirogue,” or “perogue.” 21 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA W.1N :i£ 1 Q Wt, 6.—Building pinnaces, schooners and similar boats for travel along the coast. A scene in New Amsterdam during the Dutch occupancy, drawn from an early description and sketch. useful birch-bark canoe the Indian selected his tree, made a straight vertical incision in the bark from near the base of the trunk to a spot at the height of his head, and then, with utmost care, peeled the bark from the tree by the aid of his knife. The framework of the craft was made of thin strips of cedar or spruce, and the birch-bark covering was attached to it by long, tough, slender, fibrous roots of the larch or balsam, which had previously been manipu¬ lated into extreme pliability. The various strips of birch- bark were also sewed together with the same sort of roots, and, before being fastened to the framework, were cut to the necessary pattern. The boat was then completed and given its final shape by the insertion of the many narrow and elastic ribs of spruce. All seams and cracks were cov¬ ered with hot pitch from the balsam or spruce, and the >canoe was water-tight and ready for use. Each tribe had 22 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA its own pattern or style for its canoes, and they varied in size from ten or twelve feet to fifty or sixty feet in length. In this wonderful and famous boat, created by the woodcraft genius of the Indian from the materials imme¬ diately about him, he could travel for thousands of miles if need be. When he came to the head waters of a stream, where the current no longer afforded the few inches of depth necessary to carry him on his way, he could pick up his canoe and carry it for miles to another lake or river. In times of storm it served him as a snug shelter, and the forest was a factory where it could be repaired, or even replaced, at any time, with prompt delivery guaranteed. “Thus the Birch Canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, Like a yellow water lily.” 1 Longfellow’s lines, from “Hiawatha.” CHAPTER III EARLY DEVELOPMENT GOVERNED BY THE NEEDS OF COM¬ MUNITIES RATHER THAN BY KNOWLEDGE OR EXPLORA¬ TION— THE CENTERS FROM WHICH TRAVEL MOVE¬ MENTS RADIATED — PRIMITIVE BRIDGES — THE BUILDING OF SMALL BOATS BEGUN — A PHILAN¬ THROPIC MISTAKE OF THE DUTCH — ORGANIZED MI¬ GRATIONS OF LARGE COMPANIES OF PEOPLE AN IMPOR¬ TANT FEATURE OF THE FIRST CENTURY T HE many years of early exploration throughout the whole extent of the continent, carried on by brave individual adventurers and trappers chiefly from Spain and France before the year 1620 had almost no effect in shaping the after-history and development of America’s travel system. The significance of any discovery in its relation to the subject, whether of route or method of travel, did not lie in the earliest information respecting that route or method, but in the popular impulse which was later — sometimes much later — to recognize its value and demand its use. It was necessity or compre¬ hension, not knowledge; the needs or desires of the people rather than the exploits and achievements of individuals that always influenced the progress of the system and led on, little by little, to what now exists. Hence it was that definite and visible progress in creating established methods of getting about the country did not begin until several English colonies had found 24 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA firm foothold along the Atlantic coast. There were three motives that caused the first travel movements among the early population. One was the natural wish of a settle¬ ment to get into touch with its neighbors; another was need of betterment and growth; and the third was an oc¬ casional impulse, due to differences of one sort or another, which sometimes caused part of a colony to separate from the rest of it and go elsewhere to set up for itself. The five principal localities from which radiated the first travel movements of the country were the Chesapeake Bay region; eastern Massachusetts; New York Bay and the Great River of the Mountains; 1 the Connecticut River valley and Long Island Sound; and Delaware Bay and the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. Three of these, the Chesapeake, New York and Delaware Bays, are important among those gateways already re¬ ferred to through which the interior of the country is accessible from the Atlantic seaboard. But the two biggest entrances of all—the Mississippi River with its tributaries and the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes — were destined to play a much smaller part in the story than their importance warranted. For it so hap¬ pened that the course of wars and politics in Europe produced conditions in America which deprived the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence River and the lakes of much of the influence they might otherwise have had in shaping the development of travel in America. For generations five mutually jealous and conflict¬ ing groups were quarreling and fighting in an effort to get control of the continent. Each of three nations— France, Spain and England — was scheming to extend its own possessions and oust the others; the English colonies •An early name for the Hudson River. 25 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA were trying to secure the administration of their own affairs; and the Indians were doing what they could to be rid of the lot or restrict their movements. The continu¬ ous control of the St. Lawrence by the French for nearly a hundred and fifty years after the arrival of the first English colonies, and the similar uninterrupted holding of the Mississippi by France and Spain until some time after the Revolution, long prevented the use of those two gateways as factors in any progress in which the English speaking inhabitants were interested. And the impulse 7.—Vessels of considerable size were often built at a distance from the water and then drawn by oxen to the scene of their employment. While so moving they rested on trucks whose wheels were solid sections of hardwood trees. The scene here shown is in Philadelphia, where a large sailing boat is being finished at the side of a street. which was finally to result in giving the Mississippi a place in the free and unobstructed travel system of the country came, not from its mouth, but from the upper valley of the stream, where a vigorous English speaking 26 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA population had become established and demanded the use of the river. By about the year 1636, then, the movement of the population in and from all of the five regions named had 8.—The first sort of bridge used by white pioneers was a log thrown across a stream. already begun and some action had been taken, both by the guiding minds of the colonies and by the people on their own impulse, to make such travel as easy and rapid as was possible under the conditions that surrounded them. On order of the authorities of Plymouth Colony all creeks and rivulets were bridged by felling trees across them, and canoe ferries were established for the passage of the larger streams. A few of the first canoes used by the people of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colony were doubtless of the birch variety, bought from the Indians, but the prompt and unfortunate results of the unstable equilibrium of those canoes under the unpracticed guid- 27 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ance of the white pioneers quickly decided them to shift to the less graceful, but more calm and sedate type of craft such as was made by hollowing a log. It is not difficult to picture the inward emotion of an Indian as he sold a birch-bark canoe to a high hatted Pilgrim, and then, standing on the river bank, watched his customer step into the craft, only instantly to leave it from the other side and disappear head first into the water. Having fished out the white interloper the red man would buy back his canoe, enter it, and depart. After the adoption cf log canoes became general, and as population increased, trees especially suitable for canoe making were often marked by the authorities and protected by orders which forbade their use for any other purpose. The difficulty of movement on the land, added to the location of the colonies on navigable waters and a growing desire to get into closer relationship with one another, led the colonists at an early date to the building of small sailing vessels suitable for navigating the many bays and short stretches of sea that separated them. These little boats were variously called pinks, pinnaces, ketches, schooners, lighters, shallops, sloops and periaguas, the names depending on differences in the rigging of the craft or the shape of the hull, or on local usage. The New England people were noticeably active in this boat mak¬ ing, and their first vessel, the Blessing of the Bay, was launched at Mystic in 1631. By 1635 six little ships had been built, and after the year 1640 the industry was well established at Boston, Gloucester, Plymouth, Salem, New Haven, New London, Dorchester, Scituate and Newport. During the forty-five years ending with 1676 no less than seven hundred and thirty vessels of some size had been created by Massachusetts colonists alone, and many hun- 28 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA dred others by the men of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine. A considerable number of the first craft were devoted chiefly to fishing or to trade with England, the West Indies and the other colonies, but boats of some sort or another were kept by families living near water just as a modern farmer or business man keeps an automobile. They were used to travel in whenever circumstances per¬ mitted, and were not infrequently hired for that purpose. It was not unusual for early boats to be constructed at a considerable distance from the water, since it was occa¬ sionally more economical of time and labor to move the completed vessel overland than slowly to carry heavy timbers to the water’s edge. When a ship so built was finished the settlement gathered on an appointed day, placed her bodily in a stout, rude, cradle-like platform with wide wheels, propped her securely, and off she went on her first and only land voyage. Many oxen did the hard work of pulling, and in that way boats were at times hauled a mile or two before they reached a more easily navigated element. By the year 1641 New England had a population of about twenty thousand, and even before that time the governing bodies of the various colonies and towns had recognized the need of improving the land routes between such settlements as were near together. The Massa¬ chusetts General Court, in 1639, declared there should be a road between Plymouth and Boston, and work on it was soon commenced. As yet there was no travel by land vehicles, and the few horses were used almost solely for farm purposes. The Indian trails, or traces as they were also called, still remained the best and established links of land communication. All such trails, however, were gradually being widened without official action and 29 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA changed to roads by the increasing travel over them, and the governmental purpose was merely to hasten and im¬ prove a process that had already begun. Probably the earliest important travel movement by a part of the population from one section of the country to another was that which resulted in the permanent establishment of English influence in what is now Con¬ necticut. For this the Dutch at New Amsterdam were responsible, much to their later sorrow and regret. When the Dutch first planted themselves in the New World they chose, with canny foresight, three points of highest im¬ portance at that time, namely, Delaware Bay, the Hudson River valley and the Connecticut River valley. Having bought Manhattan Island for twenty-four dollars’ worth of trifles that were sweet in the sight of the Indians, Governor Van Twiller indulged himself in a burst of generosity which was not thereafter repeated. He sent a party up to Plymouth to call on his English neighbors, and told the Pilgrims that the valley of the Connecticut, where the Dutch already had a sentiment or two, was very much nicer for farming than their bleak location, and recommended that they try it. This was in 1627. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony also heard favorable rumor about the Connecticut River region in 1631. As a result of these reports a movement from the two Massachusetts colonies began in 1633, and by 1636 no less than a thousand men, women and children had under¬ taken the journey to their new homes. The Blessing of the Bay made a trip from Boston to the mouth of the Connecticut in the year first named, and at the same time a small party started overland to the river, penetrating as far as the present site of Springfield, in Massachusetts. 30 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Later in the same year a company of people travelled by boat from Plymouth to the Connecticut coast, landed there, proceeded up the river, and started the settlement that became Windsor. Small parties followed at inter¬ vals, usually going in boats, but in November of 1635 a party numbering sixty persons succeeded in making the trip overland. This remarkable and hitherto unparallelled 9.—Bridges similar to this were the most elaborate that were required until wheeled vehicles came into use for journeys between separated settlements.. land journey of about one hundred miles was accom¬ plished in two weeks. The household goods of the travellers were sent by water, but the live stock, consisting of numerous cattle and a few horses, marched through the forest with their owners. The speed of the caravan averaged a little more than a mile in an hour. All the men, women and sturdy children walked, and those who became ill or exhausted were placed on the broad backs; 31 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA of the oxen, or on the horses. The men carried packs of food and small utensils on their backs, and were also armed, but suffered no molestation. The climax of the migration came in 1636, when Pastor Thomas Hooker of the church in New Town led a memorable overland expedition from Massachusetts Bay colony into the Connecticut region. Although the number of those who made the journey was only about one hundred, yet the pilgrimage, with those that imme¬ diately followed it, seriously depleted the population of Dorchester, Watertown and New Town. Governor Winthrop refers to Hooker’s famous exodus in his records by saying: “June 30, 1636. Mr. Hooker, pastor of the church of New Town, and the most of his congregation went to Connecticut. His wife was carried in a horse-litter. And they drove an hundred and sixty cattle, and fed of their milk by the way.” This throng of early travellers, like their predecessors of the previous year, moved through the wilderness along the famous Indian trail afterward to become known as the Old Connecticut Path, and they established new homes on the present sites of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield. The trail after leaving New Town pro¬ ceeded in a general western or southwestern direction, and, passing through the locations of the present towns of Marlborough, Grafton and Oxford, came at last to the future site of Springfield, on the river which was the travellers’ goal. Hooker’s expedition also spent two weeks in marching through the woods, and though its members were compelled to ford many streams and push their way through dense thickets and swamps under the burden of their packs, they experienced no extreme 32 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA suffering. The Indians were friendly. It was simply a matter of resolution, perseverance and hard work. While these things were going on the Dutch had sincerely repented their hearty recommendation of the region to the English and did all they could, short of the use of actual force, to prevent its occupation. But it was too late. The English refused to be frightened by the pointing of blunderbusses and the tooting of admonitory trumpets. They discovered to their surprise that Van Twil- ler had told them the truth; kept coming; and when they got there, remained. For a time the Dutch remained also, in a state of dignified indignation, and then went away. Such was the manner of travel at that time. As years went by the movements of the population gradually increased in number, covered wider areas and extended over greater distances, especially in the North. There was one common aspect of them, natural to such a newly and thinly settled country, that persisted for about a cen¬ tury. The people travelled in groups or companies, just as they were later to do in the settlement of the Northwest Territory and still later in their progress across the plains of the far West. Individual travel did not exist save for short distances until close to the year 1700. Many definitely organized migrations similar to the one from Massachusetts to Connecticut followed it in all parts of the colonies during the next hundred years. They were in fact a feature of the period. During the same year that witnessed the Hooker pilgrimage a small com¬ pany went northward from Massachusetts to what is now Exeter, in New Hampshire, and still another Bay State party moved to the vicinity of Dover, New Hampshire, to find a new home. Roger Williams also made his winter journey of fourteen weeks through the wilderness in 1636, 33 i A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA and in his wanderings to the spot where the city of Providence now stands he was fed, sheltered and kindly treated by the Indians. Others soon followed him to the same locality. The number, extent and importance of the early journeys made by organized bodies of the popula- 10.—Nearly all extensive travelling for a century and a half was undertaken by large parties moving together. Sometimes the women and children were carried in horse-litters. Many pedestrian caravans moved through the forest between such widely separated localities as New England and the Carolinas. tion from one part of the country to another can best be shown, perhaps, in a chronological list, and a record of that sort, exclusive of those already mentioned and doubt- less far from complete, is here given: 1638.—Several companies left Massachusetts and jour¬ neyed to Quinnipiac (now New Haven, Connecticut). 34 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 1639.—Milford and Guilford, in Connecticut, were simi¬ larly settled. 1639. —Parties of Dutch left New Amsterdam and occu¬ pied distant points along the Hudson River. 1640. —Settlers from New England proceeded to Long Island and established themselves at Southampton. 1642.—Emigrants from New Haven colony went to Del¬ aware Bay, bought a tract of land at Burlington from the Indians and settled on the Delaware River. On their arrival they lived for a time in the cow houses of Swedes who had preceded them. 1642.-—Another party from New Haven moved to the Delaware Bay region, bought lands from the natives on the Schuylkill River and began to establish themselves there. 1653.—A company went from Virginia into what is now North Carolina, stopped near the Chowan River and began the Albemarle settlement. Some Quakers were in this body of emigrants. 1655. —Jamaica, on Long Island, was established by peo¬ ple who travelled down from New England. 1656. —Many Dutch removed from New Amsterdam to the settlements on Delaware Bay. 1660.—A number of New England people went to North Carolina, bought lands of Indians on Cape Fear River and settled there. They did not like the location, how¬ ever, and left. 1665.—A body of emigrants from New Hampshire jour¬ neyed to the Raritan River, in New Jersey. 1665.—From Milford, Guilford and Bramford, in New Haven colony, a considerable party set out and went to the present neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. 35 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 1665.—A company of settlers from Newbury, in Massa¬ chusetts, established themselves on the Raritan River, in New Jersey. These three last named migrations were the result of a systematic campaign made by agents of New Jersey in New England, where they were sent to praise the country and get immigrants. 1671.—A group of Dutch from New York settled along the Ashley River, in the Carolinas. 1682 to 1690.—Large parties from Virginia, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and other col¬ onies travelled to the Delaware River region and settled in the new colony of Pennsylvania and the town of Philadelphia. 1732.—People living on the Potomac River, in Virginia, began to move over the mountains to the valley of the Shenandoah. 1737.—A party of a hundred Potomac families journeyed through this last named region and settled near the present towns of Winchester and Strasburg. 1725-1740.—A steady stream of emigration travelled from Virginia and Pennsylvania into North Carolina. 1735-1740.—Similar groups from Virginia and Pennsyl¬ vania moved into South Carolina. These were not the trifling shifts for short distances, such as were also going on during the constant establish¬ ment of new farms and new settlements near older ones. They were long and pretentious travels, often for hun¬ dreds of miles, calling for careful and elaborate prepara¬ tion, the breaking up of homes and the enduring of many trials. They were the first manifestations of the restless desire for movement and change, the somewhere-else feel¬ ing, that has ever since been a characteristic of the native 36 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA born American. Through them and similar early migra¬ tions, accomplished on foot or by the aid of boats and a few horses, marked by hardships and sometimes ending in disaster or disappointment, a better knowledge of the condition and character of the country was gradually obtained by the population. CHAPTER IV POLE-BOATS AND THE MANNER OF THEIR NAVIGATION — INCREDIBLE LABOR PERFORMED IN USING THEM — THE INFLUENCE OF CONNECTICUT — BEGINNING THE SYSTEMATIC TRANSFORMATION OF INDIAN TRAILS INTO CRUDE ROADS — EARLY FERRIES AROUND BOSTON AND NEW YORK — SEDAN CHAIRS — THE FIRST HORSE VEHICLES AND THEIR TRIUMPH OVER PURI¬ TAN PREJUDICE — LAWS AGAINST TRAVEL — THE INTRODUCTION AND EQUIPMENT OF SLEDS — TRAVEL IN WINTER — RESULT OF THE FOUNDING OF PHILA¬ DELPHIA— THE EVOLUTION OF THE OLD INDIAN TRAIL ACROSS NEW JERSEY — LONG HORSEBACK JOURNEYS BECOME POSSIBLE — THE ADVENTURES OF MISTRESS KNIGHT OF BOSTON T WO of the earliest types of river boats that followed the canoe, as the needs of the growing settlements became greater, were probably first used by the pioneers on the Connecticut River. Both sorts of craft with slight modifications were widely adopted in various regions, particularly where the streams were rapid or shallow, and were common throughout the country until after the year 1800 . One was called a pole-boat, from the means by which it was propelled up-stream. Usually made of planks hewed from the pine, it was from twenty to thirty feet long, three to five feet wide, some two or three feet deep, 38 f A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA pointed at both ends, and had a flat bottom. Even when heavily laden it was serviceable in less than a foot of water. Such a boat was navigated down a stream by means of oars or poles with almost no effort, but going back up¬ stream, especially against a rapid current, was a far dif¬ ferent matter. The crew — exclusive of steersman — consisted of four, six or eight men, according to the size of the craft, and each man was armed with a long, stout pole made of ash or hickory, with a heavy, wrought iron spike at one end. There were two methods of propulsion. With an equal number of men standing on each side of the boat, as near to the bow as possible and facing the stern, they would plant their spikes in the bottom of the stream at an angle, and with the upper end of each man’s pole against his shoulder they would all walk as far 11 . —Early types of river boats used by families on long journeys. They probably originated on the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers. The ark, or flatboat, varied somewhat in form, was built of heavy timbers, and was rarely navigated against the current. The barge, a lighter vessel with canoe-like lines, was pushed up-stream by poles. At first the barge was called a keel- boat and had no covered shelter. 39 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA toward the stem as possible. 1 By so doing they pushed the boat out from under their feet in an up-stream direc¬ tion and propelled it, with each repetition of the process, nearly a boat’s length. Two men would then hold the distance gained until the others hurried back to the bow and planted their poles in the bottom again. The second method of advancing consisted in facing the bow of the boat with the workers in two stationary groups, one near the bow and the other near the stern. The groups would push on their poles alternately, with a helmsman to correct the zigzag impulse. The labor necessary for ascending a rapid river in either of these ways was so great as to be beyond exaggeration, yet it was constantly accomplished over long distances, and the method remained in wide fashion for very many years. Men took it for granted there was nothing else to do, and that the same conditions would always prevail. The other type of early river boat was substantially a duplicate, in form and material, of the one just described. It was, however, about twice as long and wide, and equipped with a mast and sails. When going against the wind the sails were dropped and poles were used, as in the case of the smaller vessel. The obstruction in the river shown in the illustration, and through which the larger boat is being guided with care and difficulty, is not a natural formation. It is an ancient fish-dam, built by the Indians with boulders gath¬ ered from the bed and banks of the river. In the center of such a contrivance the Indians left an opening about six or eight feet wide, and below this gap they constructed, with woven roots, willow branches and such material, a ' i 1 They moved back and forth on narrow wooden runways, about ten inches wide, that were built on each side of the boat for the purpose. 40 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA great basket-like enclosure that reached down-stream a dozen feet, and was tightly joined at each end to the dam. When food was needed a large number of the red men would enter the water and form in line across the stream 12.—Two keel-boats ascending a river. Those of large size carried masts, and used sails whenever possible. The curved obstruction in the stream, with an opening in the center, is not a natural formation but an Indian fish-dam built of boulders. about half a mile above their trap and wade slowly down, kicking and beating the water with sticks as they moved. The frightened fish fleeing before them would finally en¬ counter the dam and be converged by it to the opening, through which they would rush into the woven sack to be scooped out by thousands. In this way did the Indian often do his fishing, much to the embarrassment of future white navigators. Several of these early stone fish-dams still exist in the upper reaches of Tippecanoe River, in northern Indiana, just as they were built by the Pota- watomi. But Connecticut’s most important contribution to the 41 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA progress of those primitive days did not lie so much in the devising of methods of travel as it did in the remarka¬ ble way in which her people wandered over the face of the land. They went everywhere, until at last their uni¬ versal presence became a proverb in the mouths of the people. Any stranger, any new settler in a community, was dubbed a “Connecticut Yankee,” and the chances were that the guess was a good one. From those few square miles there went forth a pioneer influence that was always strong, and sometimes decisive, in shaping the affairs of new regions. The Susquehanna River valley in Pennsylvania, eastern Long Island, western Massachu¬ setts, northern New Jersey, western Vermont, central and western New York and at a later date the Western Re¬ serve of Ohio all were swayed or powerfully affected, in their beginnings, by Connecticut migrations. There is a legend which says that at one time the natives of Con¬ necticut and graduates of Yale College lacked but five of constituting an actual majority of the National Congress. 1 By the year 1683 the towns of Boston and New York and the new settlement of Philadelphia had become so bustling and important that travel from one to another was a common thing, and necessity began to urge the making of such land highways between them as would permit of regular traffic. Indian trails and paths made by settlers already linked the three centers with a route passable over a part of its extent by horses, though most of the travel from any one of the towns to another was still accomplished by boat. In the cities some of the wealthy and governing classes had been using sedan chairs for a long time, and a few private coaches of various sorts had begun to appear. Boston and New York, because of the numer- 1 The saying is sometimes attributed to Calhoun. 42 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 13.—A bill submitted to Massachusetts Bay Province by Ferryman John Knight of Boston, in 1709, asking payment for services rendered to the Sheraft, military officers and other officials during the preceding three years. He asked £ 6 , 3s, and was allowed £ 3, Is, 6d, or just half the amount requested. ous smaller settlements situated on the waters all around them, had also grappled with the problem of ferry facili¬ ties for the primeval suburbanites who lived near by. In Massachusetts Bay the business of ferrying was given into the hands of watermen who used big barge¬ like boats capable of carrying horses and goods as well as men. One of these ferry owners was a certain John Knight, and a bill rendered by him for work performed is herein reproduced. It indicates that he had allowed the 43 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA account to run for more than two years, since the first entry, for ferrying “a Sheraft and 33 of his men” is dated in August of 1706, and the last, for transporting “John Bunker, 6 Indians and 1 horse” has the date of January, 1709. The total bill was but six pounds and three shill¬ ings, or about thirty dollars. Ferryman Knight duly pre¬ sented his account to the authorities, and owing to the scarcity of paper the House of Representatives of the colony used the other side of the bill itself for the formal engrossment of its action thereon. The resolution, duly signed by the Speaker and Secretary of the House, shows 14.—The flatboat with a sail is one of the first city ferry boats, like those used in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other coast towns until about 1800. that Knight was allowed for his work the sum of “three pounds, one shilling and six pence,” or exactly one-half of the amount called for by his bill. The ferries in use on the waters around New York 44 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA City, or some of them at least, were similar barges, equipped with sails. Such was the ferry boat to Brook¬ lyn. Owing to the strong tides and currents and the squalls of wind for which the bay has always been noted, many capsizings and other accidents in which men and beasts were sometimes drowned, attended the history of the early New York ferries. The sedan chairs in which certain of the wealthy peo¬ ple and official classes were accustomed to travel about the towns were commonly carried by servants, though vehicles of a type resembling the one made for Pastor Hooker’s wife, and borne by a single horse, were also in use. Such things as sedan chairs were distinctly an importation — in idea at least — from Europe, though they were used in America for a long time, chiefly in New York and Phila¬ delphia. Benjamin Franklin rode in a sedan chair, on occasions, as late as the year 1789. One of the earliest of them in English America was that which belonged to Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts Bay colony. It was a rich and magnificent specimen, originally made at the order of a viceroy of Mexico and intended for some dignitary in Spain. It was found on a Spanish galleon captured by the English and by them presented to Win¬ throp. He said, in speaking of the gift, that he “had no use for it.” There was more behind that remark of Winthrop’s than appears on the surface. Doubtless he would have been glad to move about in comfort in the carved, silver- bedecked and silk-upholstered box, for he was a human being after all, but public opinion and the ruling spirits of the church in the Puritan colony would not have per¬ mitted such an action. Men and women of New England were banished, or had their ears cut ofif, or were hanged 45 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA in those days for offenses scarce more heinous than the use of such a devil’s trap as a gaudy sedan chair. Even in 1687, nearly fifty years afterward, the first horse coaches which appeared in Boston were severely frowned upon as contrivances fit for this world only, and their brazen owners were subjected to scorn and derision. But the shameless proprietors of those first vehicles found in the possession of them a solace that was sufficient recompense even for social ostracism. And, sad to relate, others of sufficient wealth were also tempted and fell. The use of horses and coaches continued, and slowly increased. Satan was triumphant. Outside the towns and their immediate neighborhoods the utility of the first coaches was very limited indeed. Roads were scarcely worthy of the name, and there were no bridges. When a coach came to a stream too deep to be forded it was stood upon its wheels in two parallel canoes, and thus conveyed across. The horses swam. There were three types of the earliest American wheeled vehicles. One was patterned after the heavy and cumbrous two-horse family carriage that had just come into limited use in England. The others were better adapted to conditions in such new country, and each was drawn by one horse. The first of the Americanized types was called a chair, and the other a chaise. The chair was a two-wheeled vehicle with a seat for two, and sometimes with an additional small seat, almost over the shafts, for the driver. Of this carriage the Canadian caleche was a variety. The chaise was simply a chair with a covered top of leather. None of the earliest specimens had springs, but swung on stout braces of wood or leather that somewhat alleviated the constant jolting. All were made by local blacksmiths and wheelwrights, some of whom built up 46 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA reputations by the excellence of their work and thus be¬ came the first carriage makers of the country. There was not much change in the three types of vehicles for a hun- 15.—The first wheeled vehicles to appear were a few private coaches, made in the large towns for town use only, late in the seventeenth century. The condition of the roads did not permit their employment elsewhere. A dozen or so vehicles like this existed in Boston, Philadelphia and New York before 1700. They had bodies either of wood or leather and were generally painted in bright colors. dred years or more, except that they gradually became more ornate in their outward aspect. All through the colonies a tendency toward the use of brighter and still brighter colors, both for personal wear and for application to miscellaneous belongings was apparent for a long time. This trait of the people reached its climax shortly before the days of the Revolution. Its effect on vehicles was seen in their brightly-painted wheels, their bodies of red, yel¬ low, blue or brown, with panels of different hues and trim¬ mings to match. Especially was this craving for warmth of color observable in the middle and southern colonies. And it must have been a dazzling sight to see such equi- 47 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA pages in a festal hour with the women in white satin gowns and filmy shoulder veils of purple or emerald green, beside men in lace ruffles, blue coats, yellow waistcoats, knee breeches of buff, scarlet stockings and silver buckles. Philadelphia possessed about thirty carts and other wheeled vehicles in 1697, and New York also had a num¬ ber, but the introduction of such things did not proceed with any uniformity throughout the country. In Con¬ necticut, for instance, there were no carriages until about 1750 and few until after the Revolution. When Governor Trumbull of Connecticut visited the town of Norwich during the Revolution he travelled in a chaise, and the people of the village abandoned their affairs with one accord and flocked to behold such an extraordinary con¬ traption. No vehicles were used, or any travelling per¬ formed on Sunday in some of the colonies until after the era of independence began. It was prohibited by law. Sunday, by the statutes, commenced at sunset of Satur¬ day and continued until the same time on the Sabbath. On one occasion a man who was about to resume his horseback journey left his tavern on Sunday evening, stood beside the animal and patiently waited until the sun had retired, as he thought, for the night. Then he mounted and rode away. But a moment later one last brief gleam of sunlight broke for an instant from behind the clouds and was spied by a vigilant constable. The traveller was arrested and fined. Much travelling by land was performed in the winter. During the spring, summer-time and autumn, particularly in the northern colonies, a large part of the population was busy in the work necessary to an agricultural, land-clear¬ ing and seafaring community. But winter was the time for recreation and visiting, and for making journeys to 48 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA towns where markets could be found for the sale of such commodities as the farmer and his family had produced. In winter the roads of the middle and northern colonies were no longer seas of mud with archipelagos of stumps, but were made smooth and firm with a pavement spread upon them from the sky. The smaller streams and rivers, too, were turned to highways of ice and were often used. Sleighs of various crude and simple types appeared at an early date, and by the year 1700 were in general use. One of the commonest varieties of these vehicles for winter 16.—American colonial sleds were generally called either pungs or pods, though the Canadian cariole was also used. The pungs and pods ordinarily had an open space between the bed of the sled and its runners. Each American type also had a shelf-like extension of the floor beyond its sides for its whole length. Horse-drawn sleds preferred to travel on the smooth surfaces of frozen streams when possible. travel was an idea adopted 1 from Canada. The Canadians spoke of it as a cariole, but the people of New England, who have always preferred to use home-made names for 1 With alterations. 49 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA things, called a sleigh either a pung or a pod, and found it just as serviceable. They were more concerned with feat¬ ures of utility than with melodious nomenclature. A pung was drawn by two horses; a pod by one. When loaded and equipped for a long journey over the snows a pung must have been an interesting spectacle. In the body of the vehicle sat the farmer’s wife, with maybe a child or two, all of them bundled up with coats, blankets, hoods, mittens and mufflers against the sharp air. Around them were heaped the things they had prepared for sale — cheeses, dried herbs, bundles of knitted stockings and mittens, parcels of vegetables, mysterious jugs, flax, and all those other primitive commodities of domestic growth or manufacture — until the whole outfit looked like a miniature mountain on runners. As for the man himself, he trotted alongside. There was no room for him on board. And to the side of every departing pung, as the chiefest part of its equipment for a journey, there was securely tied a huge round chunk of frozen porridge (bean porridge, of course) and a hatchet with which to chop off a chunk of it when any of the travellers might feel the need of nourishment. No doubt this curious commissary department of an early New England sleigh throws a certain light on that famous old nursery rhyme that runs: “Bean porridge hot; bean porridge cold; Bean porridge in the pot, nine days old.” Preliminary to every such trip, and a few days before it, the housewife would cook a big pot of porridge and then, setting it out-of-doors in the kettle, would allow it to ripen and freeze while awaiting the time for the jour¬ ney to begin. There is no present way of finding out whether the epicures of that period considered nine days 50 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA as the most appetizing age for winter bean porridge, but of one thing we may be sure; it was very, very cold. For short winter trips, or whenever the snow was too soft or deep for horses, snow-shoes were used, and the traveller carried a staff at the bottom of which was fixed a &mzt Srww in 27/7 : r 17.—Winter travel in the northern colonies was performed on foot, or in sleds drawn by dogs or horses. The New England winter pedestrian, in addition to his snow-shoes, was equipped with a pole having a large wooden disc at its bottom for extra support. wide, flat piece of wood, usually round or oval in shape, as an additional support. Still another means of travel during the winter season was the dog-sled. This method of conveyance was copied from a similar usage of the Indians, who in times of hostility sometimes also employed sleds for transporting their baggage or feeble captives through the wilderness. The dog-sleds were small and simple affairs, consisting of a flat base of pine or spruce about two feet wide, upcurved in front, and with room for but one person to seat himself. From two to six 51 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA dogs constituted a team. Although the dog-sled never came into widespread use at any one time or in any given locality, except in the far North and Northwest, it never¬ theless persisted in various forms as a vehicle of travel in America for perhaps two hundred years, and is still used in Alaska and Canada. The establishment of the town of Philadelphia and its rapid growth had exerted a decided influence on the de¬ velopment of land travel in the colonies. By 1690 the place consisted of some six or eight hundred houses, peo¬ ple were journeying to it from all other parts of the coun¬ try, and there was no longer any doubt that it was on its way toward an assured greatness. Three chief centers of social and commercial activity — New York, the Massa¬ chusetts towns and the settlements on the Delaware — then existed in the North, and it was inevitable that they should soon become linked by definite and continuous land routes of travel. The Dutch, who had previously held that part of New Jersey between Amboy on New York Bay and the Delaware River, abandoned the region about the year 1675. At that time it was still a wilderness traversed only by Indian paths and but seldom crossed by white men. The main trail of the aborigines extended through the territory from Elizabethport, near New York Bay, and proceeding by way of the future settlements of New Brunswick and Trenton, finally reached the Dela¬ ware River. Such, then, was the route by which the colonists travelled overland between New York and Philadelphia in 1675. They made the journey on foot if they went at all, and under ordinary circumstances were from three to five days on the road. It was this path of the Indians which was adopted as the best line for a steam railroad across New Jersey a hun- A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA dred and sixty years afterward, and it was exactly above the same old historic travel route, two hundred and thirty- five years afterward, that a flying-man made the first flight on schedule time ever performed. On that occasion an aeroplane was driven in an uninterrupted journey from New York to Philadelphia in an hour and fifty minutes as announced in advance, or five minutes faster than the running time of the swiftest regular railroad train be¬ tween the two cities. 1 Such things, however, did not abide within the philosophy of the red men. To them belongs the credit of pointing out the best paths, but we use the information in our own peculiar way. They went be¬ neath the trees. We can go above. By about the year 1682 the people of the Delaware River towns were beginning to open short roads between their various settlements, and the roads were gradually followed by local vehicle traffic for small distances. The few wagons or carts were very crude and awkward, had immensely wide wheels, and were most used in going to previously arranged gatherings that were sure to be at¬ tended by considerable numbers of people. The inhab¬ itants of Burlington, for example, held fairs at stated in¬ tervals, to which the inhabitants of other settlements trav¬ elled in order to buy or exchange commodities or to visit friends and relatives. Little by little the roads in all settled parts of the col¬ onies were extended by the cooperation of communities and through individual labor, until in a few years con¬ tinuous horseback journeys between Boston and Philadel¬ phia were possible with comparative ease. But since all intending travellers did not own horses it often happened that a party of four would set out for a common destina- 1 Hamilton’s flight of June 13, 1910. 53 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA tion with one horse. In such a case it was the practice for two to mount and ride a couple of miles, leaving the others to follow on foot. Then the riders would dismount, tie the horse by the roadside and continue on foot in their turn until the others, having reached the animal and mounted it, would overtake them. In that manner they proceeded, with considerable satisfaction to all concerned except the . - . .. . -a : . ' ■ . ■ ■ « ; .... ■ : ' : ' , . : . ' , ' ' 'i ~L ^ • X »■ ' v / 4 J i. fXDIA noct THAI N. ----— 18.—The dog-sled, or Indian dog train, was used when the snow was too deep or too soft to uphold horses. Such a sled was six or seven feet long, and its bottom was made of smooth planks. The title on the original engraving is a misprint. fifth member of the party. Two travelling together also used the same system if but one horse was available. In the year 1702 a woman went on horseback from Boston to Philadelphia and carried a baby in her lap for the entire distance. That was a notable occurrence. When a man and his wife rode one horse the man, in a saddle, sat as usual, and the woman was. perched behind him on a A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA cushion called a pillion. The woman’s pillion was strapped to the motive power of the expedition, and below it, on one side, was hun«r a narrow wooden platform for her feet. A school-teacher—Mrs. Knight — who travelled from Boston to New York on horseback in the year 1704 wrote a little book describing her trip, and her nar¬ rative contains much interesting information regarding the character and manners of the people she met on the way, as well as a recital of the experiences which she en¬ countered. It is related by her that on one occasion she came to an inn late at night, and desiring shelter, sum¬ moned the inmates. Finally the landlady appeared, but instead of immediately bustling about to make the guest comfortable, and postponing a manifestation of her inter¬ est in the arrival, she planted herself immovably on the solid rock of her feminine curiosity and began: “Law for me! What in the world brings you here this time of night? I never saw a woman on the Rode so Dreadful late in all my versall life! Who are you? Where are you going?” And so on. But Mrs. Knight, being a schoolmistress, finally passed the examination and got to bed. On the same trip she met a man and his daughter, riding on separate horses. The girl had only a bag for a saddle, and Mrs. Knight heard her plaintively say: “Lawful heart, father! This bare mare hurts me dingily. I’m dreadful sore, I vow.” It was small wonder she was uncomfortable, for it developed that she and her father had been jogging along for thirty miles. Mrs. Knight also gave her opinion of the canoe, whose erratic propensities as a vehicle filled her with misgivings. Coming to a stream she was compelled to embark 55 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA in one of the craft for transportation to the other side, and she said of it: “The Cannoo was very small and shallow, which greatly terrify’d me and caused me to be very circumspect, sitting with my hands fast on each side, my eyes steady, not daring so much as to lodge my tongue a hair’s breadth more on one side of my mouth than t’other. A very thought would have oversett our wherry.” It is the little incidents like these — little bits from the actual experiences of those distant times — which best reveal the travel conditions that then prevailed. But such , records are, unfortunately, all too rare. It usually hap¬ pens in searching through the narratives of early travel¬ lers, no matter in what form they may be found, that the record tells of leaving a certain place on a certain day and of reaching another place in the course of time, but nothing else. Of the adventures and conditions encoun¬ tered, the expedients and methods used during the journey there are few details given, or none at all. CHAPTER V ANOTHER ELEMENT IN THE PROBLEM — EARLY CONDITIONS PROFOUNDLY INFLUENCED BY THE NATIVE INHABI¬ TANTS— THE STRATEGIC GEOGRAPHICAL POSITIONS HELD BY THE INDIANS — THEIR EARLY ATTITUDE TOWARD WHITE MEN — NATURE OF INDIAN PROPRIE¬ TORSHIP OVER LANDS — COVETOUSNESS OF THE WHITES — DEVELOPMENT OF NATIVE PREJUDICE TO¬ WARD ENGLISH TRAVEL MOVEMENT AND ITS CAUSES — TREATMENT OF EACH RACE BY THE OTHER — A CENTURY AND A HALF OF CONFLICT — BLOCKHOUSES — EFFECT OF EUROPEAN POLITICS AND INTERCOLO¬ NIAL JEALOUSIES — FIRST SYMPTOMS OF THE IM¬ PENDING WESTWARD MOVEMENT APPEAR — THE DOMINATION OF THE WHITE RACE INEVITABLE T HUS far, while tracing the earliest growth of a system of internal communications destined to develop from such crude beginnings into the most extensive and valuable series of public works ever con¬ structed by men, whose relation to the national life has finally become one of the principal social and indus¬ trial problems at present existing, it has only been neces¬ sary to consider the primitive needs of our forefathers and the first devices created or adapted to meet those necessities. But the growth of the white man’s travel system in America and his subjugation of the continent by its use 57 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA was, in its first stages, a matter of somewhat more com¬ plexity than has as yet been suggested. Progress in the early days did not depend solely on the creation and exten¬ sion of thoroughfares and the successive introduction of new and better types of vehicles. There was yet another element in the problem, one that exerted a strong and at times decisive influence for generations. That factor was the Indian. And since no complete picture of the white man’s aspiration for movement and of the travel conditions that existed until comparatively recent days can be drawn without introducing the native occupants and original owners of the territory involved, it is well to turn for a time from the primary question of routes and vehicles in order to observe why— and to what degree — the popu¬ lation movements of early times were influenced by the white man’s copper-colored antagonist. The Indians of the eastern part of the continent, when the first permanent white men’s settlements were made in that region, had seemingly occupied the land, unaffected by any outside or visiting influence of im¬ portance, for several thousands of years. They had perhaps been here, slowly ascending from a very primi¬ tive level, since that period when mastodons were com¬ mon, when Niagara Falls did not exist, 1 and possibly even since the time when Lakes Erie and Ontario, as one body of water, had their drainage westwardly through the Wabash River, thence into the Ohio and the Mississippi. Collectively these native Americans had held undis¬ puted possession of the continent, and with the lapse of many centuries the various tribes into which the race had broken up had acquired, in a certain sense, rec¬ ognized title to the territories they severally held. 1 About seven thousand to ten thousand years ago. 58 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Such titles were not the precise recorded legal instruments of white civilization, but were established or altered by occupation, treaties and strength of arms, and were maintained by cooperative action based on tribal government or by the still more powerful joint action of federations of tribes. Regions so held were some¬ times roughly bounded by natural lines such as moun¬ tains, lakes, or conspicuous landmarks, and — howsoever delimited — the adjoining tribes, save in time of war, respected the territorial rights or pretensions of their neighbors. Sometimes a region was made neutral by the tacit or formal agreement of many tribes and used by them for a common purpose, such as hunting. The lands lying in the present state of Kentucky were an un¬ inhabited territory, so rich in game that no tribe was allowed their exclusive control. In short, the use, dominion over and occupancy of land and favorable locations was a subject on which the Indians placed a high importance. Themselves accustomed to great distances and long journeys, the Indians had, as has been suggested, an unerring appreciation of the importance of good lines of communication and the best and easiest travel routes. The strongest and most influential tribes and confedera¬ tions lived on or near important rivers, bays or lakes, or in territory that offered the easiest means of subsistence and travel. The Indians were economic strategists. When the white men came they found the natives were established in those localities that seemed most desirable for white settlement. The red men had already seen the advantages of such locations as Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, the Delaware^ Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers, New York harbor, the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers, 59 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Massachusetts Bay, 1 and the easily traversed route, through what is now New York state, from the upper Hudson to the westward by way of the Great Lakes. This last mentioned region was occupied by the most powerful and best organized group of Indians in eastern North America, the League of the Iroquois, a confederation, 19.—A horse-barrow. Crude home-made barrows, carts and wagons slowly developed, outside the towns, wherever conditions made them useful. There¬ after they showed but slight improvement for more than a century. The wheels of many barrows and carts consisted of solid sections of tree trunks, and were from six to twelve inches in width. Original sketch by the early American artist, Joshua Shaw. One of eleven recently found drawings by the same artist, reproduced in these pages and depicting conditions of pioneer life and travel. at that time, of five strong tribes whose common affairs were administered by a central council made up of dele¬ gates from each. The first human quality which seriously affected inter¬ course between the natives and the white strangers was covetousness. The newcomers wanted—and determined to possess—those choice territorial tidbits which the 1 Modern names for these localities are used, instead of those given by the natives or early explorers, in order that they may be more quickly identified. The native name for the Connecticut River, for instance, was “Quinni-tukq-ut,” or “Quoneh-ta-cut,” and the Dutch called it “De Versche Riviere.” 60 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Indians equally esteemed as desirable regions for habita¬ tion. At once began the long history of negotiation, treaty and purchase, inevitable as a phenomenon of human progress but too often defiled by the sordidness of power, by which the country passed piecemeal into the possession of the white race. It is true the newcomers acknowledged that ownership of the lands was vested in the native occu¬ pants, and that they usually paid for the territories, in a technical sense, under terms of formal purchase. But it was the white men who demanded to buy . 1 It was the white men who fixed the purchase price, and the red men who realized what refusal would mean. The occupation of continents and the sway of white skins over dark skins is determined by laws not passed by legis¬ latures. The unfortunate effect upon the red men of the process by which they were stripped of their possessions was the speedy creation of a hostility — always existent thereafter in at least a passive sense and often fanned into warfare by imposition or pressure upon them — toward the movements of the white men. For the Indians soon saw that much white travel resulted in more demands to buy land, more purchases, permanent white occupation and a curtailment of their own territory and natural means of subsistence. The presence of white men meant the absence of game, and Indian poverty. That conception of the red man which has been summed up in the ethnological proverb, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” runs somewhat wide of the truth. It is not too much to say that in the early days of their association with the English speaking colonists, the native Americans compared rather favorably with the strangers in the exhibition of those human qualities 1 Reference is made to the English speaking colonies and colonists. 61 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA that inspire confidence and serve to distinguish honor and fair dealing from duplicity. When an Indian and a white man were about to engage in a transaction in¬ volving something of value owned by the native and coveted by the Caucasian, it was for a long time a com¬ mon custom to make the Indian drunk as a preliminary to the negotiation. Peter Kalm, in his Voyage to North America, refers to this practise, and says: “Many per¬ sons have assured me that the Indians are frequently cheated in disposing of their goods, especially when they are in liquor, and that sometimes they do not get one- half or one-tenth of the value of their goods. I have been witness to several transactions of this kind .” 1 When a white man had a just grievance against a native and the attention of the offending Indian’s tribe was called to the matter, the chiefs of his clan compelled the culprit to make restitution and often visited upon him a severe penalty . 2 The Iroquois held deceit in such ab¬ horrence that on some occasions they punished lying with the penalty of death. Among the early colonists the personal accountability code of the Indians was not looked upon with favor for use in dealing with offenders of the white race. As a consequence the estimation in which the newcomers were held by the natives was low¬ ered. Under normal conditions, and in dealing with colonists who did not impose on them, the Indians as a race were hospitable and kind to the limit of their oppor¬ tunities. In their sight, at first, a white man was pre- 1 An Indian once said to Sir William Johnson (England’s agent in dealing with the northern natives): “You English buy territory by the use of the bottle.’’ “With liquor as the bartering medium, nothing could save the Indian from wrong.” —Winsor, in “The Westward Movement.” 2 This attitude of the natives gradually ceased. The authorities of the colonies got into the habit of disowning the white trouble-makers along the border, and of disavowing re¬ sponsibility for their unfair or unlawful acts. Trespassers on Indian lands sometimes com¬ mitted their outrages at such a distance from the hand of authority that it was impossible to catch the culprits even if the desire to do so existed. So the natives followed the example of the whites, and took frhe same position. 62 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA sumed to be a good man, kindly disposed. If he proved himself to be bad, that was another matter. There were bad men on both sides. But the Indian had to prove himself, against open prejudice, to be good. Occasion¬ ally and after long effort he was successful, but it was a hard matter at best, and from the chronicles that have come down from those times it is apparent that such attempts on his part, even when sincere and justified by the facts, failed more often than they succeeded. One of the best records of the relative viewpoints from which each race regarded the other lies in the words spoken to Conrad Weiser, an early traveller, by Canas- satego, the Onondaga chief who was his host. “If a white man in travelling through our country,” said the savage to the civilized man, “enters one of our cabins, we treat him as I do you. We dry him, if he is wet; we warm him, if he is cold; and give him meat and drink that he may allay his hunger and thirst, and we spread soft furs for him to rest and sleep on. We demand noth¬ ing in return. But if I go into a white man’s house and ask for victuals and drink, they say, ‘Where is your money?’ and if I have none they say, ‘Get out, you Indian dog.’ ” Whatever value Canassatego’s words may have as a possible illumination of Indian character does not lie in the manner of their utterance but in the philosophy that inspired them. Few Indians could have spoken thus, but there is much evidence to indicate that the Indians as a race felt as he did, until their character and attitude, in so far as relations with white men were concerned, were much changed by long brooding on imposition and the impending wreck of their birthright. The things that resulted in enmity between the red men and the white are not hard to define. They were a 63 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA failure by the bulk of the newcomers to understand the viewpoint of the natives with respect to the ownership of the country and the effect of white men’s presence in it, and the display, on the part of the strangers, of motives and methods that antagonized both the philosophy and material interests of the original inhabitants. Whenever it happened, in the earlier days of their association, that a white man treated his Indian neighbors as decent fellow men, and not as dangerous creatures that should be re¬ moved from the face of nature, such a white man was esteemed as a friend. Accounts of the early troubles between the races, having all been prepared and handed down by one party to the controversies, can be depended on as reliable and conservative whenever they give praise to the opposition. And narratives of the sort, written by colonists, contain the record — sometimes by inference and sometimes frankly — of native traits such as are here outlined. In later years, unhappily, a white man was often considered to be an enemy simply because he was white, just as a colonist looked on an Indian as an enemy because he was an Indian. Civilization in its final aspect is not demonstrated by the possession and operation of railroads, steamboats and flying machines. We may with safety say, despite a con¬ siderable lingering impression to the contrary, that further and greater progress can be made by the use of more intangible elements than these. The Indians had not progressed in mechanical ingenuity to the point that we have reached, nor could they, but in one sense their cultural state surpassed that of the race which was to overthrow them. Their age-long battle with and study of Nature had woven into their character a consideration of the common welfare, a man-to-man accountability for 64 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 20.—The Yarmouth Coach, which originated in England, w T as a very small, cart-like pleasure conveyance, with two broad-tired wheels. When similar vehicles were employed for more serious purposes in America the standing driver ceased to appear. word and act, a disdain of petty evasion, an ability to discern motive, and a keenness in separating honesty from hypocrisy and friend from foe, that excelled the similar attributes possessed by the white-skinned men who appeared among them. The strangers from abroad, though they did not realize it, were under one disad¬ vantage. Their methods of life — their civilization — had blunted in them those qualities in which the Indians were supreme. That was why the Indians as a race did not get along in their dealings with the white men as a race. There was no common footing, either of character or ma¬ terial interests, on which both could stand. The whites 65 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA thought the Indians were children; heathen. But it was the Indians who were wise in their comprehension of the significance of events, and the strangers who were blind. So the colonists came and settled down. Around them was the wilderness. That they could see, for it was tangible. It held them back, but it stood still when attacked and could be slowly demolished as occasion re¬ quired. The other barrier which surrounded them was one they felt, rather than saw. From the most northern settlements in Maine to Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, an elastic and tightly drawn cordon of native influence stretched close around them and hampered them. From it came forth a ceaseless constriction, mani¬ fested in many ways, against their free and general progress about the country. The restraint irritated and angered them, and when the strain and bickering reached a certain point, as it often did, there came an open rupture and fighting. Sometimes the restraint exerted by the Indians was due, in whatever form it took, to preconcerted action, but its underlying origin and motive—no matter whether it was the act of one or many, whether spontaneous or planned — was a general realization by the whole native population of the continental menace that confronted them. The natives looked into the future and saw, perhaps before the white men did, what was happening. There¬ fore it was not the individual traveller in whose path obstacles were laid. There was nothing immediate to fear from an individual. He would return whence he came. The two things that brought alarm and sadness to the souls of the Indians were bulk-movements of the white men and any manifestation of a desire to creep toward the West. Thus it was that the early extensive 66 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA travelling of the whites, as we have seen, was performed in parties sufficiently large to insure mutual support and safety in case of need. And all the influence of the natives — in which they were greatly aided for a time by the physical barrier of the Appalachian Mountains — was exerted in keeping the tide of travel movement confined to a north-and-south direction along the narrow coastal region some hundred and fifty miles in width. Had that native influence not been exerted, both by the display of strong and ceaseless objection and the use of their land titles as a barrier, a general travel toward the West must have taken place many years before it actually began. But so long as the colonies remained divided —- although they several times tried to unite in a diplomatic sense to oppose the Indian policy — the native strategy prevailed. It was not until a more centralized govern¬ ment and a deeper feeling of American solidarity came into existence and devoted the joint energies of all the states to the effort, that the stubborn native opposition to widespread travel was finally broken down, and the west¬ ward movement became national in its character. Unknown thousands died in those outbreaks of border warfare that lasted for a century and three-quarters, and at times certain regions were for a while swept clear of their Caucasian inhabitants. But the final result was always the same. The white race, in its contact with other men, has been a glacier whose implacable and grind¬ ing advance makes up the chief part of recorded history, and the moraines that mark its progress are forts and guns. There was no exception here in America. No matter how severe the setback was, other white men came in force enough to guarantee safety and reoccupy the devastated and deserted territory. They rebuilt the 67 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA burned log dwellings and set up little fortifications which they called blockhouses, strongly made of huge hewn timbers, with loopholes for rifles and usually with a projecting upper story from which fighters could com¬ mand the entrances below. In the course of time the outlying districts and main travel routes throughout all the region held by the whites were dotted with such blockhouses, into which the population could retire if it became necessary. Those structures, and the larger palisaded or smooth timber forts which were also built, were long an essential feature of American life and move¬ ment. Many times it happened that a party of travellers journeying through the wilderness learned from some swift courier that hostilities had begun, and their leisurely advance changed upon the instant to wild flight toward the nearest blockhouse and safety. Usually they gained the refuge, there to be held in siege while the rifles with¬ out which no men went abroad were used against other and duskier men who claimed the territory they had in¬ vaded. At other times the travellers did not reach the little forts in season, and vanished into the forest as captives or else went forth upon a yet longer journey — from which there could be no return. It seems probable that for a short period after their first coming the various colonies entertained a belief that they could go their own way without much relation with the Indians beyond such association as they themselves decreed, or as was necessary in exchanging trinkets for square miles; that they might consider the natives as part of the surrounding scenery. This hope — to whatever extent it existed — speedily disappeared, and the new¬ comers came to a realization that their contact with 68 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the original proprietors of the continent was the chief problem of their domestic affairs. Then began a pro* longed period during which the power and territorial location of the Indians gradually became an element in the vast and complicated game of international politics wherein France, England and Spain were the contestants, and North America was the prize for which they strug- gled. Wheedled by gifts, by crafty appeals to their tribal animosities, by the blandishment of honeyed words and promises not always meant to be fulfilled; in short, by all 21.—The first four-wheeled wagons were small, with flat beds and straight body lines. They w r ere often covered, in whole or in part, with tops of home-made linsey-woolsey designed as a protection for women and children. The men walked. those arts of civilization which white men can employ with such proficiency in like emergencies when dealing with aborigines, the Indians became catspaws for the con¬ tending forces that coveted their dominion and sought 69 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA their undoing. To this state of affairs was added the con¬ stant demand, by the English speaking colonies, for u more land; more land.” The purpose of the Indians in thus taking sides with some white men against others — after realizing that all the strangers could not be got rid of — was clear. If a group of tribes decided as a result of conference that the French would be better permanent neighbors than the English, and had a chance to destroy the English, then they helped France. Often they decided the other way, and acted accordingly. And of all those native decisions none approached, in its importance and effect on Ameri¬ can affairs, the determination of the League of the Iro¬ quois to oppose the ambitions of the French and remain on a friendly footing with the English, if possible . 1 The geographical position of the native confederation has already been outlined. When, in addition, it is kept in mind that any travel by white men on Lakes George, Champlain, Ontario and Erie, the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, the upper Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers, or through the entire territory stretching westward from Albany to the neighborhood of the present city of Cleve¬ land, was for a long time dependent on their willingness and consent, the power of the Iroquois as a factor in the early mobility of the white men will be understood. So great was their influence, and so wide the recognition of it, that they came to be known as the Keepers of the High¬ way of America. The governors of Pennsylvania, Vir- 1 It is not meant that the Iroquois wished to be on friendly footing with the English colonists, but with the English government. That confederation, and many other tribes as well, considered themselves to be—and in some few respects were—on a political equality with the white colonies in so far as relations with England were concerned. For a considerable time prior to the Revolution England dealt with the natives not through the colonies, but more or less directly. One of her chief embarrassments over American affairs was the constant conflict between the two races and the native demand for protection against the encroachments of the colonists. In the Revolution many Iroquois fought on the side of the English against the Americans. 70 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ginia, New York, Maryland, and perhaps of other colo¬ nies came to treat with them — did not summon the Iroquois, but went in person to them. The story of the beginning of the unfriendly attitude of the Iroquois toward the French is an interesting one, relevant to the subject under consideration. In the sum¬ mer of 1609, while the explorer Champlain was on his way through the country in search of knowledge that might aid France in her plans for the control of America, he fell in with some Hurons who were going to fight the Iroquois. From the Hurons he learned of the lake that now bears his name, and also of Lake George, the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, Lake Ontario, and the strategic travel route leading toward the West of which those waters were a part. The tribes that inhabited and con¬ trolled the important region in question, he was told, were the ones with which his native companions were at odds. Champlain and the Hurons continued to travel together, and one day they came upon a party of Iroquois. The French explorer and his fellow countrymen were of course provided with firearms, and though the Iroquois were not his enemies he fired upon them. It was quite safe to do so, and the act was an adventure that relieved the monotony of the march. The Iroquois fled. Before the terrible bang-stick of the white man the legs of two war¬ riors standing afar off became as the stems of broken flow¬ ers, and they fell down dead. The Indians could not cope with a weapon like that, but the story of its existence and use went through the wilderness and the relationship between France and the Five Nations was fixed. For nearly a hundred and fifty years afterward the effect of that prejudice was still apparent, despite many later efforts of France to secure the Iroquois as allies. 71 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA It is useless to speculate on what might afterward have taken place had not that early antagonism of the Iroquois against the French been created by Champlain’s act. History is a hen that sits upon the eggs of opportunity and chance, and the events she hatches are a strange brood. Had the French, from their position in Canada, secured the lasting cooperation of the Iroquois they could in that manner have held the region whose control was to determine the destiny of the continent. One aspect of colonial affairs which for a long time played into the hands of the Indians was a sort of complex jealousy the colonies had of one another and that pre¬ vented them, save on unusual occasions, from acting in unison. Each colony feared that the schemes of con¬ solidation from time to time proposed would deprive it of various privileges of self-government which it insisted on and held in high esteem. There were also numerous acute and long continued quarrels between some of the colonial governments, especially those of Virginia, Penn¬ sylvania, New York and Connecticut, over boundary lines and the political future of the territory toward the West. But despite these matters the colonists did occasionally try to present a united front in their dealings with the natives. Six times within a period of sixty-seven years — in 1684, 1694, 1711, 1722, 1748 and 1751—there were gatherings or congresses held to negotiate with the Keepers of the Highway. The population was growing; the developing spirit of nationality had already created a cleavage between the interests of England and America, and a restless tendency to move and spread out became more and more apparent. As early as the year 1753 a dribble of white men began from Pennsylvania and Maryland into the region around 72 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the headwaters of the Ohio River, constituting a move¬ ment toward the West instead of in the old north-and- south groove. The French and Indian War and Pontiac’s uprising delayed but did not prevent the white occupation. The Indians protested, and in 1768 there was another conclave at Fort Pitt between the Iroquois, Shawnees and Delawares, and the white men. The meeting was due to the alarm of the Indians over increasing encroachments on their territory and the killing of natives by invading whites. Among the subjects considered at the congress of the races were land titles, outrages com¬ mitted against the natives and the privilege of unham¬ pered travel. The white authorities apologized for pre¬ vious murders and the Delaware chieftain — Beaver — finally grasped the wampum belt of peace and said: “Take hold of the end of this belt, which we may stretch along the road between us, in order that we may all travel it in peace and safety.” Thus another agreement was made by which the colonies promised to respect the territorial interests of the red men. The Indians, as they understood existing conditions, were well within their prerogatives in making protest at invasion, since the British government had recognized the rights of the Indians to undisturbed occu¬ pancy of all the lands west of the Alleghany Mountains, and by a proclamation issued in 1763 had fixed the west¬ ern bounds of the white colonies at the natural line formed by the range in question. But the forces that were at work and the conditions that existed were too elemental to be controlled and directed by the routine methods of or¬ ganized society. A king who lived across the seas could not be the stage manager of the drama whose preliminary scenes were being enacted here. Its development was 73 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA dependent on things that had happened before ever there was an England; on processes which took place in that remote and geologic time when men of fair skins and gray eyes came out of savagery and found within them¬ selves a desire to rule and the power to destroy their duskier fellows. Here was a virgin continent, rich be¬ yond conjecture, and owned by a handful of lowlier men whose hue was the pronouncement of their doom. Beside them had become entrenched a horde of the rest¬ less and all-pervading race, smitten once more with the fever of conquest that surges in its blood and whose im¬ patience at the limitations to its movement and dominion was swiftly reaching a stage at which transmutation into action would begin. Against such an impulse the ordi¬ nary machinery of political government and the decrees of kings could have no effect. As well might an effort be made to stop the sweep of an ocean’s tide by aldermanic resolution. Like pent-up waters that can no longer be contained in the reservoir designed to hold them, the white men overflowed the mountains. The little vanguard of a com¬ ing army was not content, as others had been, to find new homes within the coast region so long overrun by the whites, but with one long leap penetrated far into the wilderness. The founding of Pittsburgh furnishes an illustration of the distances to which those pioneers trav¬ elled through unknown country. There was as yet no outright breaking of the dam; no advance which re¬ sembled a human flood sweeping through the immense and gloomy forests. That was to come a little later. But the period of shoulder-to-shoulder life was passing away, and between the older regions along the Atlantic and those new and wilder lands where the first interior settle- 74 22._A New England two-wheeled ox-cart. Used for nearly two centuries as a means of transport between f r and villages lying within a day’s journey. The scene is in New Haven, with some buildings of Yale College in the background. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ments were planted there intervened a wilderness some two hundred miles in width that was without white habitation. There were native protests, bloody reprisals, more conferences, and in 1768 an impoitant new treaty was signed at Fort Stanwix giving to the white men all the country south and east of a line which began on the Ohio River at the mouth of the Cherokee River, 1 that continued up the Ohio to Pittsburgh, thence up the Alleghany to Kittanning, thence overland to the most western branch of the Susquehanna (in New York), thence to Awandoe Creek and the upper Delaware, and finally up the Dela¬ ware to a poinf near Fort Stanwix. For their title to this territory, which included large parts of the present states of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, the white men paid to the Indians about fifty thousand dollars and pledged themselves that no colonists should travel, for purposes of settlement, either north or west of the line which fixed its limits. All territory north and west of the line was confirmed to the Indians. But friction still continued, and in 1774 the conflict known in history as Dunmore’s 2 War broke out. The immediate event which aroused the Indians to a fury and caused them, under the leadership of the Shawnee war chief — Cornstalk — to fight one of the very few pitched battles in their history, was the murder by white frontiersmen of all the family and relatives of the Iroquois chief Logan. Logan was a friend of the white race. He was a native who possessed a sufficient loftiness of character to forgive the murder of some others of his kinsfolk by 1 As the Tennessee River was then known. 2 Lord Dunmore was the governor of Virginia at the time. The wrath of the Indians was directed toward the settlers of that province, and Virginia white men were the only colonists who fought. 76 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA * settlers at an earlier day. His sense of honor, and his dignity, fairness, loyalty and kindness had won for him the admiration and respect of many prominent white men. One day in April of 1774 a party of nine Indians, in¬ cluding men, women and babies, and embracing all of Logan’s family, left his village 1 and set out on a friendly visit to the trading camp of a whiteman named Greathouse with whom they were on good terms, and whom they often went to see. There the grown up natives were made drunk, and when they had become helpless and easy to despatch, Greathouse and two of his companions killed the whole lot, not omitting the children. So began Dunmore’s War. Indian runners sped through all the trails of the forest, leaving the news at every little village of native huts and rushing on again, while the warriors who listened to the tidings they brought were on the way to join Logan and Cornstalk almost be¬ fore the messengers had vanished in the shadows that swallowed them. When Logan was told what had been done he became a madman. The color of a man’s skin makes small difference when he hears a story like that. Logan went to war in his turn. 2 His friendship for the whites was changed to hatred, and with the vision of his murdered kin before him he killed with ferocitv and joy. While the madness lasted he revelled in blood. But the war ended, as usual, in the defeat of the red men before the rifles of the Virginians, and after the overthrow of the Indians in a pitched battle near the Ohio River a peace was concluded between Governor Dunmore and the natives. Logan refused to attend the treaty negotia¬ tions, saying that he was a warrior and not a diplomat 1 At Yellow Creek on the upper Ohio 'River. 2 In the eyes of Indians, and according to their immemorial practise, such an act was war. 77 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA whose only strength lay in his tongue. He sent to the conference, instead, the message known as Logan’s Speech, a few brief words in explanation of his position that have from that day taken rank as perhaps the loftiest utterance made by a native American. So profound was the im¬ pression the message created at the conference that the white men who were there assembled — all of whom had known and esteemed Logan — sat up half the night beside their camp-fires in order to talk about it and commit it to memory. By the terms of the treaty that ended Dunmore’s War the white population of the colonies was granted per¬ mission to navigate the Ohio River without molestation by the natives, and one more step was thereby taken in the travel movement toward the West. So the white men’s boats, cumbrous, uncouth of aspect, yet freighted with the restless energy and strength of a conquering people, floated out at last on the waters of the Beautiful River. It was also agreed in the treaty that no northern Indians were to go south of the Ohio, and that no white men should thereafter penetrate into the native territories north of that stream. Such was the situation just previous to the Revolution, whose near approach was already apparent. With the outbreak of that struggle all lesser affairs, including the relations between colonies and Indians, and the questions bearing on safe and improved travel conditions through¬ out the country were swept aside, not again to be taken up until the outcome of the struggle for political independ¬ ence should be determined. The Indians as a rule took sides with England during the contest 1 and fought against the colonial forces. Their 1 Some Indian nations remained neutral. 78 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA action in that respect was understandable in view of what had gone before, for whatever protection they had secured in their quarrels with the colonials had been due to action by the British government itself and its crown repre- 23.—The Canadian caleche, which was used in northern New England, grad¬ ually evolved into one of the early colonial two-wheeled vehicles called the chair. When equipped with a linsey-woolsey or leather cover the chair became a chaise. See illustrations Nos. 59 and 156. sentatives on this side of the water. The Continental Con¬ gress and its agents made efforts to secure Indians as allies for the colonies against the English, but with such small success that the attempt was soon given up as hope¬ less. The red men understood that overtures from the new American government were not prompted by friendli ness, but by desperate need. And in addition to the native memory of past grievances an incident which happened early in the war made any such alliance out of the ques¬ tion, even if otherwise possible. 79 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Among those Indian nations whose head men sought to keep out of the struggle between England and her revolting possessions were the Shawnees, of which Cornstalk was a leader. But the hot bloods among the Shawnees, eager for revenge against the colonists, were for fighting under the Cross of Saint George. In an effort to maintain peace between his people and the colo¬ nials Cornstalk went on a visit of friendliness to a fort of the American troops, taking with him Redhawk and an¬ other chief. To the Americans he explained the situation, saying that though many of the Shawnee fighting men wanted war, he and the other leaders were against a clash and hoped to prevent it. He also said, as any man in his position would do, that in case his best efforts were un¬ successful he would be in honor bound to fight at the head of his warriors. On those words the white Ameri¬ cans seized Cornstalk and the other two visitors and imprisoned them as hostages. 1 Thereupon the Shawnees went to war against the colonists, and soon killed a soldier of the fort where Corn¬ stalk was held prisoner. When a party of the other soldiers found their dead comrade they ran with one ac¬ cord toward the fort and rushed in with a tumult. Corn¬ stalk heard, and divined what it meant. Rising to his feet he bade his son 2 stand likewise, saying to him that it was good they should die together. As the white soldiers burst into the room Cornstalk turned and faced them and so perished. The outcome of the Revolution placed both the new¬ born nation and the Indians in a difficult position. Eng- 1 An act showing how little the Indian character was understood by its perpetrators. In addition to its uselessness as a factor for peace, such a deed was more apt to incite hostilities than to prevent them. 2 Who had come to visit him. 80 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA land, by ceding to the American states all territory she had held south of the Great Lakes and east of the Missis¬ sippi had of necessity abandoned her red allies to the mercies of a country which they had just been fighting, and left them on lands the title to which had, in theoretical sense, passed to the confederated colonies. The Republic, on the other hand, could not rid itself of the native red pop¬ ulation that had so recently been armed foes. It was brought face to face with a situation that demanded free and unimpeded travel through much of the outlying regions, while at the same time circumstances called for a recog¬ nition of the property right of the Indians to lands on which they might live and gain their sustenance. The necessity of more territory toward the west in which the nation might expand and meet the needs of a growing population, together with the attainment of safe travel toward the west were plain, and gradually became — aside from politics — the principal feature of the nation’s internal affairs. In fact the conditions here stated, and which were first brought into prominence soon after the Revolution, continued to be the controlling influence in the development of the Republic from that day until the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and all that lay between, were linked together by an unbroken travel system eighty- six years afterward. There were times when the people seemed to pause for a while on the march, as a giant who sleeps, but they always went on again, ever demanding a little more room in which to move and a better way of getting where they wanted to go. Beginning with the Congress of the Confederation, the newly created United States recognized the several groups of Indians as separate nations having sov¬ ereignty over and ownership of territory, and dealt with 81 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA them on that basis. 1 Whenever it occurred — as it did many times — that the United States found need for regions owned and occupied by the Indians it acquired possession of such territories by the negotiation of formal treaties, just as it did in buying the Louisiana Territory from France and Florida from Spain. In the early years of the Northwest Territory the armed troops of the confederated colonies sometimes used force in evicting settlers who had encroached on the Indians’ lands in that region, and even burned the log cabins of such invaders. Yet at the same time the nation was demanding that the Indians allow white men to travel into and settle on the territory where the evictions were taking place. These things indicated a willingness —- even a desire—on the part of the Caucasian officials to ac¬ complish a predetermined purpose by methods quite cor¬ rect from the civilized standpoint of orderly legislative and legal process. From the more primitive viewpoint of the natives the curious spectacle presented simply an unworthy quibble. To the Indians it mattered little what method was used in depriving them of their land. They didn’t want to give it up at all. It was small consolation for them to discover that henceforth they were to lose 1 Among the acts of the new American government in which the Indians were acknowledged to be people distinct from the citizens of the Republic, and in which their land proprietorship and qualities of separate nationality were stated may be cited the following: Articles of confederation; adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777: Article 6.— “No state shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in Congress ' assembled, unless such state be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such state, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay, till the United States in Congress assembled can be Consulted.” Const’tution drawn up by the Congress of the Confederation and put into effect in 1789: Article 1. Section 8.—“Congress shall have power ... to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Northwest Ordinance, adopted by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787. Sec¬ tion 8.—“The Governor . . . shall proceed, from time to time, as circumstances may require, to lay out the parts of the district on which the Indian titles shall have been extinguished, into counties and townships.” From the same instrument: Article III.—The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property rights and liberty they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress.” 82 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA it through reluctantly signed documents, portentous with ceremony and red seals, whose completion was al¬ ways promptly followed by the appearance of soldiers, surveyors and more white travellers marching through the forest. Some chiefs at last refused to sign any papers, saying that every time they did so their people lost some¬ thing. • From 1774 until the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, following Wayne’s decisive victory over the confederated tribes at Fallen Timbers, there was no real peace along the northwestern border. Caucasian movement either by land or water was at all times unsafe, and many a traveller found a destination he was not seeking. But from 1795 until Tecumseh tried, sixteen years later, to organize the interior tribes into a confederacy opposed to further white advance, reasonable quiet reigned upon the frontier. Whatever other dangers and hardships the traveller might encounter he was in little peril that was due from Indian molestation of any sort. CHAPTER VI EARLY CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH — RADICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ITS DEVELOPMENT AND THAT OF THE NORTH — THE LIMITED MOVEMENT OF EARLY DAYS — ORIGIN AND EFFECT OF THE PLANTATION SYSTEM — SOCIAL CLEAVAGE — WASHINGTON AS A TYPE OF ONE CLASS — THE TASK OF THE PEOPLE AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY FOUND STRENGTH TO PERFORM IT D URING the early years of their history 1 the growth of the southern colonies, with the exception of Vir¬ ginia, did not proceed nearly so rapidly as that of the regions which have already claimed attention. Nor did important movements of the population develop so promptly. As a whole the general settlement of the future southern states along the Atlantic seaboard took place at a decidedly later date than did the rise of the New England and middle colonies. Other elements that helped to bring about the condition stated were the nature of the southern region itself, and the character, traditions, habits and ne¬ cessities of the first white men who permanently occupied it. That part of the South extending from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico had not been so favored as the North with a pro¬ fusion of natural highways of travel in the shape of lakes and rivers. It had, to be sure, the Chesapeake Bay and 1 The period before 1770. 84 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Potomac River as a gateway into the interior, the Chero¬ kee and Cumberland Rivers flowing northward into the Ohio, and a few coastal streams against whose currents slow progress could be made by small boats or log canoes for goodly distances into the wilderness. In an almost literal sense the South of that early day was a solid block of primeval woods that, apart from the actual coast itself, demanded travel on land or none at all. It was further 24.—A very fine private coach of the late eighteenth century. Probably built about 1790 by David Clark of Philadelphia, for Samuel Powell of that city. Exhibited during the Civil War period, in museums and public fairs, as a coach that had belonged to Washington. true that rough and mountainous country made up a larger proportion of the territory than was the case in the early settled parts of New England and the middle sec¬ tions. Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, the two Carolinas and Georgia were notable for the obstacles they presented to early and primitive land travel. Yet it was precisely those difficulties that inspired their early inhabitants with 85 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the indomitable spirit from which victory is born, and made the southern wilderness a scene of memorable deeds. That part of the continent was to witness the first west¬ ward march of a white population through the forest; the first organized display of the new travel impulse that afterward continued without interruption by flatboat, steamboat, canal-boat, stage-coach, prairie schooner and railway until there was no more land to cross, and the Pacific Ocean halted the long migration. Among all phases of the varied history that deals with the occupation and economic conquest of the continent by the white race, that which relates to the South from the time of its first settlements until the War for Independence is perhaps least known. We possess the dates and stories of certain important events, and a few human figures stand out with the prominence of silhouettes against a background of mystery, legend and conjecture. But mere dates are no longer esteemed the chief elements of history. They are not even the skeleton of it, for chronological records alone do not enable us to reconstruct the whole symmetrical substance of a period. They do not portray its features, analyze its qualities of strength and weakness or transform its vanished people and activities into a liv¬ ing drama that can be exhibited like moving pictures thrown upon a screen. The southern generations of that early time lived afar off. They had a hard time of it at first — even harder in many ways than those to the north of them. They tried to be sufficient unto themselves as far as possible; were very busy in the struggle to estab¬ lish themselves securely in a new country, and — doubt¬ less because of their surroundings, isolation and labors — developed less of the recording instinct than appeared among other white pioneers of the country. 86 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA During the early years of the white invasion of Vir¬ ginia and the shores of Chesapeake Bay practically all travel was carried on between the various little settle¬ ments and plantations by means of big log canoes and heavy, broad-beamed sailing boats. And because of their fear of the Indians it was the habit of the people to build shields along the sides of the craft as a protection against arrows, and to fasten small poles in the boats, with hats on top of them just high enough to be seen above the shields, in order to make the natives think the moving parties were stronger than they really were. No effort was made for a long time to extend white activity more than a few miles back from the coast, and from the very first the character of development in the South showed a marked divergence from the tendency that manifested itself in the northern colonies. In the North the people at once began to gather into compact little communities which speedily became towns and served as central points from which radiated the white influence. .In the South this was not so. The main impulse that directed the method and progress of southern settlement in its earliest days lay in the control of men who, before coming to the new continent, had been accustomed to traditions and methods of life handed down from the feudal period of large landed estates which pro¬ duced all that was needful for owner and retainer alike. Hence the establishment of the plantation system of the South, and the creation of conditions that profoundly af¬ fected its future history not only with regard to travel movement, but in respect of all those other social and eco¬ nomic conditions that are always based on the accessibil¬ ity of population units to one another. It must not be understood there were no towns whatever in the South during its first century and a half, for there were such 87 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA communities, but they were very few in number, very small, and exerted practically no influence in the life of the inhabitants. By the year 1689 Virginia had some 50,000 or 60,000 people scattered in obedience to the plantation system, but keeping close to water. The few points where popula¬ tion was at all concentrated were little settlements called Henrico, Bermuda and West Shirley. Rude paths through the forest were increasing, and a few rough roads were in existence, but no travel by vehicle was yet possible. All land journeys of consequence were made on horse¬ back, and three years before the date named the Burgesses had recognized the importance of quicker travel by pass¬ ing a law for improving the breed of horses in the colony. The landed proprietors met this appeal of the govern¬ ment with enthusiasm and the result was the evolution of a splendid type of animal that, together with an equally famous breed developed about the same time in Rhode Island, 1 served through all the English colonies, for a long time, as the best means of getting from place to place. The early conditions in Maryland were similar to those in Virginia. Plantations were established all along the bays and rivers, each with a water frontage, and boats were the standard vehicle for such little travel as took place. Until the time of the Revolution the colony — aside from plantation clearings on the waterways — was one unbroken forest. The old Baltimore was a trivial settlement that appeared on Bush River about 1683, but the new and present city was established on the Patapsco in 1730. Even as late as the year 1752 the town had but twenty-five houses. Twenty years after the founding of 1 The Rhode Island horses were called the Narragansett breed. It is believed to have died out soon after 1800. Horses were expensive, and good animals for horseback riding were worth from £26 to £40. 88 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the colony there were only about eight thousand people within its limits, and by 1689 the population had only grown to some thirty thousand. After that time the in¬ crease was more noticeable and by 1751 Maryland had 145,000 people. Road building was advancing in a few 25.—Method by which coach or carriage travellers were conveyed across a stream in the days when journeys in wheeled vehicles were first becoming possible. If the ferry boat was a small one, the horses were compelled to swim. localities and the first wheeled vehicles and sedan chairs had appeared. The early population of these two colonies differed from that which established itself in the North in as strik¬ ing a degree as did the economic conditions of the two regions. From the first there existed in the South a sharper social cleavage in the population than was to be found in New England and the intermediate settlements. It practically divided the people of the South into two classes, one of which had brought to America and trans¬ planted here all those qualities and customs that had 89 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA long distinguished the man of culture and landed pro¬ prietor of England. The other class, numerically the greater but of infinitely less consequence in directing the political and social affairs of the people during the first century, was made up of small independent husband¬ men from abroad or from the northern settlements, and of agricultural employees and retainers of the rich. The language of Lord Calvert in cataloguing his first party of settlers as “twenty gentlemen and three hundred labor¬ ers” gives a fairly good idea of the distinction that long existed between the two sorts of inhabitants. The body of the population performed the labor necessary in trans¬ forming a vast primeval forest into a civilization. Its members felled and burned the huge trees, made potash from their ashes, planted the soil, built the log cabins and propelled the boats when journeys were made. Their lives were dedicated to severe and unceasing toil, to eating, sleeping and fighting. There is little need for wonder that they left practically no annals of the years they lived in. They spent their days in doing things; not in telling about them. And in the performance of the tremendous task that had fallen to their lot they were sustained by a strength not appreciated by themselves. They and their ancestors had never been on speaking terms with luxury and they were not able, through personal knowledge and understanding, to compare their situation with a less stern necessity. It was well for America that this was so. The other class organized and directed the activities of the time, valiantly led their fellow men in battle when need arose and sought, in the utmost degree permitted by their surroundings, to perpetuate on the edge of an immense wilderness all those refinements and light diver¬ sions of society without which their situation must have 90 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA been intolerable. They, much more than the bulk of their fellows, had need of other interests which could distract them for a time from the problem they had at¬ tacked. Even they did not behold their task as we do, for they were in actual contact with it, and so could not • mentally grasp its full proportions. Only a distant view and a perspective like the one of to-day could do that. Such travel as they were able to enjoy was to England or to the northern colonies aboard little vessels bearing car¬ goes of their tobacco. So the South slowly grew, and each plantation or settlement created its own little lost and forest-circled world, the uttermost limits of which included only the other humans within a radius of forty or fifty miles — a day’s hard horseback journey. Usually the geographical distance within which neighborly intercourse was con¬ stantly maintained was decidedly less than that. The rare occasion which brought about a more general gathering of the population was a prearranged hunt for wild pigs 1 or a meeting at some common center for a carnival of horse racing or other sport. To events like these the landed proprietors and numbers of the less important figures of the population would often journey through the woods for a hundred miles or more. It was out of such early assemblages that later grew the fairs held at Norfolk and other towns, to which the populace travelled in still larger numbers. These meetings, and the experiences gained by them, had much to do with the establishment of permanent land routes of travel that gradually came into existence. The type of landed gentlemen who from the first so indelibly impressed their character and traditions on 1 Doubtless the ancestors of the “razor-backs” still found in some woods of the South. 91 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the life of the South can be well portrayed by reference to a certain prominent and highly esteemed young soldier and pioneer named Colonel George Washington. He came somewhat late upon the.scene, but in him were embodied not only the attributes that had ruled the region for generations, but other traits that presaged the American of the future. More than any other man of his era or of all the colonies up to that time, he seems to have penetrated the future with a prophet’s half-veiled vision and beheld a little of the needs and restlessness of an unborn nation, and the ap¬ proaching demand for means of swift and comfortable movement throughout the land. Yet in that respect he was not a miracle of omniscience, any more than he was the perfect, self-sacrificing, wholly immaculate, austere and almost godlike man into which later generations, moral precepts and millions of school-books have hope¬ lessly transformed him. He was a serious minded human being of extraor¬ dinary ability, self-control and justifiable self-confidence into whose character was woven the executive instinct, somewhat of selfish thrift, and an unusual power for com¬ manding the best endeavor of other men. He had a keen appreciation of the value — in public affairs — of a large dignity and sobriety, and in private life showed a strongly developed fondness for the good things of this world. The respect in which Washington was great above his contemporaries did not lie in his abilities, for numerous men of his time were as able as he, but in a certain rare quality of the will by virtue of which he could effectively isolate and apply those abilities, each in its appropriate circumstance and time. Many men are equipped by na¬ ture as he was, and, despite opportunity, remain mediocre 92 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA in deeds accomplished, for they lack that one further thing without which the rest are valueless possessions — a self created and dogged determination to apply their powers with utmost skill and effort to the tasks which confront them. That is a gift which nature does not bestow. Like any other gentleman of the period he drank his half pint or pint of wine at dinner, together with addi¬ tional punch and beer. He would ride ten miles to attend a dance and skip about for three hours without sitting down after he got there. He spent whole days over the card table and bought his cards by the dozen packs at a time. He raced his horses, bet his money on their chances to win, and delighted when they came home in front of all the rest. In a period of two months he had visitors from other plantations on twenty-nine days, and himself 93 26.—Picturesque bridges, supported by huge logs or hewed timbers, began to appear as soon as wagons came into general use. 'Oft*/??'. - ... /.' ■.) . / i : I ■ ■ ‘ y A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA went away on seven other occasions. 1 He gathered about him, in the shadow of the wilderness, a library of the best books in history, literature and the arts, 2 and read them. Other men of his class did the like in all respects. It was their necessary way of life; an antidote for a seden¬ tary and immobile existence and their endless battle with the rude conditions of a new country. But the other sort of people had no such diversions. The forest fell before the “greatest wielders of the ax the world has known;” the smell of burning wood hung always in the air; a haze of smoke drifted over the clearing. Gradually, as the regions still farther to the south¬ ward were invaded by the white race there came increas¬ ing rumors back to the northward of their fertility and mildness of climate. Rumors at length changed to more or less authentic information, and then began a slow but constantly increasing stream of travel toward them from New England and the middle colonies. Some of the more important movements of the sort have already been men¬ tioned. The Carolinas had been occupied by various drib¬ lets of immigration from other colonies during the period from 1653 to 1740, 3 and several parties from abroad had also arrived. The Ashley River region was peopled by the English in 1670, and two years later saw the site of Charleston occupied. Quite a number of Huguenot refugees also came to the country after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, and settled along Cooper River. By the year 1689 the territory now known as North Carolina and South Carolina held some five or six thousand inhabitants, and in 1693 the region was 1 He tells of these various things in his “Journal.” 2 The large part of his books is now in the Athaneum in Boston. 3 See list of early organized migrations in Chapter III. Some of those who journeyed into the Carolinas from Virginia did so in order to escape the harsh measures of govern¬ ment that followed an insurrection in the last named colony. 94 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA divided into two colonies. The population of the north¬ ernmost of the two at that time had been mainly secured through migrations from other American settlements,' and the principal points at which the newcomers had gathered were around the Albemarle section. It was to Albemarle that the New Englanders came and to which the Virginians fled after the uprising there. The southern colony, on the contrary, was more strongly influenced and peopled by settlers direct from England, Scotland and Ireland, 2 and their first important centers of activity were the Ashley River and Charleston., Gradually the coast settlements spread and threw off fragments that made their way into the interior. Georgia did not appear on the map of American terri¬ tory permanently occupied by the English speaking race until 1733. In the previous November Oglethorpe 3 had reached Charleston from England with thirty-five fami¬ lies 4 chosen to be the nucleus of a new invasion, and leav¬ ing them in the South Carolina town he set out to visit the unknown country that was his destination. Travelling by canoe he finally reached the spot destined to become Sa¬ vannah, bought land from the Indians there, and his little company took up in its turn the conquest of the wilderness. The progress of Oglethorpe’s colony was slow, despite the arrival of several parties of Italians, Salzburgers and Scotch during the next few years. In 1736 Oglethorpe brought over two hundred and two more colonists, among whom was John Wesley. Augusta, which was founded in 1734, had but forty-seven in- 1 Though about the beginning of the eighteenth century a few Swiss and Germans settled at Newbern. - Other elements that entered into the early population of South Carolina were parties of German Palatines that came over after 1720, and some Swiss that settled near the Savannah River about 1732. 3 He had received a grant from the Crown. 4 A hundred and thirty souls, all told. 95 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA habitants in 1741, exclusive of a small garrison of soldiers, and in 1752, when the colony’s charter was surrendered to the crown of England it contained only about two thou¬ sand three hundred white people and a thousand slaves. They had made scarcely any impression on the forests that surrounded them, and moved about hardly at all. But little more need be said concerning general condi¬ tions in the South as they were just before the commence¬ ment of the population movements that introduced a new era into the history of America. Florida was merely the shuttlecock of foreign wars, alternately held by Spain and England, and her affairs bore no relation to the greater events of permanent human progress. Alabama was an unknown country with a slight fringe of settlements along the coast. Mobile, the chief of them, was a little town hedged in by a stockade and held by the English from 1763. New Orleans, like Florida, was the shifting prize of European warfare. France owned the Louisiana province until 1762, when she ceded it to Spain, and England was scheming to possess it. New Orleans had already become a place of considerable importance and contained some eight hundred houses and about four thousand inhabitants. It was surrounded by the inevitable stockade, two and a half miles in diameter. Nearly six thousand other people lived in the neighbor¬ hood of the city, whose activities extended up the Mississippi to a little French settlement called St. Louis, far off in the interior of the continent. Boats some¬ times went up the river to St. Louis, taking two or three months for the trip, but, as has already been said, the navigation of the Mississippi at that time, or during its control by European nations, was not a factor in the de¬ velopment of the American travel system. 96 CHAPTER VII THE FIRST AMERICANS WHO MARCHED TO THE WEST — THEIR ANCESTRY, QUALITIES, APPEARANCE AND MAN¬ NER OF LIVING — LOG CABINS, THEIR CONSTRUCTION, FURNISHINGS AND INDUSTRIES — NATURE OF THE EDUCATION OF THE HILL PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH — THEIR PECULIAR FITNESS FOR THEIR APPROACHING TASK — THE REPUBLIC OF WAUTAGA W E may now return to the region included at present in western and southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, and consider the people who were the first Americans to take up their march toward the West, together with the conditions that produced them and out of which their performance grew. Those men and women were Americans by birth and habit, and although the date of the exploits soon to be told was as early as the period between 1769 and 1779, the population that performed them could even then look back through several generations of ancestry which, like themselves, had grown up within the shadow of the woods and fought for life and substance with the same primitive conditions. They were the descendants of the bands of restless spirits that came down by overland marches from the more northern localities of Pennsylvania and New England during the north-and-south migrations of the period from 1735 onward, and who had brought with them into the South not only the traditional knowledge of 97 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA border existence but a lifetime of personal experience as well. So — as a race — they had no new things to learn. The instinct of the pioneer was in them, and a cool cau¬ tion, surprising alertness, bravery and entire self-reliance 27.—A backwoodsman and his dog. The cabin dwellers* clothing was all of home fabrication, and made of linsey-woolsey or deer skin. Original sketch by Joshua Shaw. This and the following fifteen illustrations, to No. 42 inclusive, constitute a series showing conditions of pioneer life and travel in the wilderness. marked all their acts. They had no schools, but a boy’s education nevertheless began as soon as he could walk. His lessons were not mere words for the brain to mem¬ orize and the tongue to repeat; they were the methods in which things were done and results accomplished by people older than himself, and it was his duty to observe those A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA processes, comprehend their purpose and duplicate them with equal skill. He learned the lessons well, for he knew that many times his life would depend on his proficiency. At the age of twelve or fourteen his father handed him a rifle and he ceased to be a boy. 1 With that act he became a man, having his man’s share of responsibilities in the community and his particular loophole to defend. The education of the girl was a similar process. By the time her brother had received his rifle she had mas¬ tered all the duties of a housewife. When a boy went on an errand he did not go spinning over the country on a bicycle or clattering along the pavements on roller skates. He took down his rifle from its pegs on the wall, looked at the priming and started across the clearing with every sense alert, and with a mind so trained that the appearance and condition of all the objects about him, together with the action of beast or bird and each other detail on the face of earth, spoke its true meaning. Though he had received no schooling in the fashion of later days he had long been enrolled in nature’s university — the forest. All its varied aspects and voices had been his teachers at an age when the boys of nowadays are still flying kites and playing marbles. He had received his degree in the difficult art of self-preservation, and was about to enter on a post-graduate course in rearing a family and increas¬ ing his stock of worldly goods. Many of those little men and women were married at the age of fifteen or sixteen, and the rigid training they had received in self-reliance and the serious concerns of life made them competent to assume such relationship and—measured by the standards of the time — to win success. 1 Long before reaching the age indicated he had become an expert with the weapon. The presentation of a rifle at that period of life had somewhat the quality of a ceremonial, and was intended to impress upon him his standing among the elders. 99 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA In personal appearance the people reflected the condi¬ tions under which they lived. Their faces, brown from exposure to the elements, were singularly set in expression and carried a sort of grimness. Nothing surprised them. The happening of every event was discounted in advance. Its coming was calmly awaited, and whatever action it demanded from them was performed so quickly that it seemed rather to be by instinct than as the result of thought or reason. Their eyes were the distinguishing feature of their countenances. Clear, inscrutable and di¬ rect, the vision of man or woman saw everything. When talking with one another they spoke eye to eye. While about their work, in the open or the forest, a single glance had the gathering power of a fisherman’s net and the anal¬ ysis of a microscope. But the chief quality and value of such a look was its instant perception of the abnormal. Trained from babyhood to recognize the normal appear¬ ance of all things about him, the eye of the woodsman automatically ignored what was undisturbed and pounced on whatever was as it should not be. A footprint of any sort shrieked like a ten-inch shell, and a single leaf stand¬ ing on edge when it should have been lying flat made him halt and ask the question, “Why?” Those early Americans carried no superfluous flesh. Somewhat above the average height, as men and women go, they were lean and supple. Their ancestors had been dwellers in the hills before them, and, of choice, had come into a mountainous country to make their new homes. Much walking and incessant labor had given them great endurance. The strength of their rough hands could break bones. Those who were weak died early, and many of the rest lived until they were killed in one way or an¬ other. They walked with a soft and swinging stride, keep- 100 28.—Backwoodsmen at work in the forest. “Greatest wielders of the ax the world has known.” Showing details of dress and the type of instrument by which the wilderness was swept away. Original sketch by Joshua Shaw. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ing themselves always well poised, for no man ever knew whether his next move would be a leap to the right or to the left, a dive behind a log, a dash ahead or a rush back¬ ward over the path he had come. Then again he might decide to climb a tree. He could never tell beforehand. Circumstances decided those things. They were a nerv¬ ous people in a certain sense, yet they held themselves with such a grip that they seemed almost phlegmatic. Nerves — or at least any indulgence in the state of mental excitability which has become a modern disease—were not in harmony with the surroundings. When a man or woman aimed a rifle the body that upheld it was like a carved figure. And after the smoke floated away there was no exultation to be seen; only the same outward calm¬ ness. Every task, whatever its degree of importance, and no matter how swiftly it was to be performed, was under¬ taken with careful and methodical process. Each indi¬ vidual sought to save his strength by planning his acts be¬ forehand, that no energy might be wasted by indecision or misdirected effort when the need for action came upon him. Such were the qualities of the people and the methods by which they adapted themselves to the country their fathers had invaded. Perhaps no race has ever been more successful than they were in fitting themselves to the nat¬ ural conditions around them and for the work they were destined to accomplish. A glance at any map will reveal the character of the region in which they lived. It was a rough country whose chief natural feature was a confusion of hills and moun¬ tains that as a general rule extended in parallel ridges from northeast to southwest. Between the ranges were valleys through which ran many rapid and usually shal- 102 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA low rivers and lesser streams. In the valleys, but near to the hills, were set up the homes of this strong primitive population. When the original migrations took place the forest swept over the whole land, mountain and valley alike, in its untouched and forbidding aspect. During the years that had gone by since then a multitude of little clearings had been made by the mountaineers, whose num¬ bers had rather rapidly increased. The number of people who lived in the hills of western North Carolina and western Virginia at the time their organized exodus began can not be accurately given, but perhaps it amounted to fifteen or twenty thousand souls. All their efforts had made but small impression on the forest. The number of trees to be felled in such work was so incalculable and their individual size so great that they cumbered the ground. There was no way to move them and nowhere to have taken them if the moving had been possible. Nor was there any use to which they could be put. They had to be burned where they fell. The timber used for fuel, and in building cabins, making fences and fashioning household furniture was such an infinitesimal part of the whole mass as to be unworthy of mention. So far as travel facilities and opportunities for getting about the country were concerned, the hill people of the South, from 1735 to the time of the Revolution, faced just the same situation that confronted the Pilgrims and Puri¬ tans in 1635. They were beginning all over again, in their part of the continent, a process of evolution that had else¬ where been in active operation for a century or more. They had a few Indian trails and some horses, but mainly depended on their own legs. The streams that were nar¬ row were spanned by log bridges, and at various well- known points on the wider rivers, big flat-bottomed ferry 103 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA boats were built, and kept for the common use of the inhabitants. Canoes were also used, but not nearly to the extent that prevailed in the early days of New England. Most of them were made from logs, and were called dug- outs. The one big advantage possessed by the mountain¬ eers over the earlier inhabitants of the North was to be found in their habits and qualities rather than in any phase of their natural surroundings. In truth the country they lived in offered much less inducement to easy move¬ ment than that of the former Americans with whom they are here compared. But the southerners were an even bolder and more self-reliant people, as might have been expected of a race with three generations of wilderness experience as an inheritance. They were more easily adaptable to conditions. No settlements that resembled towns were to be found in the hills. The cabins of the settlers — each with its clearing — showed a tendency to spring up beside some attractive stream along which they might be scattered, over a distance of a dozen miles, to the number of fifty or more. Each of these loosely connected communities, as soon as it was large enough, used its common effort in building at a convenient point a blockhouse and stockade for mutual defense. Later the people often put up a log church in whose pulpit of rough oaken slabs certain ones of the valley presided in turn, while the rest of the people sat on benches beneath them. On rare occasions a genuine ordained preacher of the gospel — a circuit rider on a salary of fifty or seventy-five dollars a year — sent word that he would visit one of the chapels. When such an event was to happen the tidings of it went through many valleys, and on the appointed Sabbath day there assem¬ bled a company drawn from all the country round. Every 104 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA tree near the log structure was a hitching-post where weary horses stood, while the men and women who had ridden them crowded within to listen to a real sermon redolent of brimstone and filled with the deep, sincere and devout feeling that reflected the inward lives of the congregation. The hill men, for all their roughness, were an earnest and religious people who clung fast to an abid¬ ing belief that their affairs were swayed by a guidance higher than their own. Though the region was far removed from effective legal control, crime was practically non-existent. Such a tie of common need and dependence as bound the popula¬ tion together, added to the labor of their existence, op¬ erated strongly to suppress any tendency toward internal disorder. It must be said, nevertheless, that the white men assumed an attitude toward the Indians that was not always in harmony with the recognition they gave to the rights of one another. In this respect they were far from being exceptional. Such regulation of their mutual af¬ fairs as seemed necessary was largely a matter of common consent, and in every district there were a few figures who, as always under like conditions, were looked upon as leaders of the rest. The homes of the people were a faithful mirror of their character and surroundings. To those little cabins of the early centuries of American development a fascinat¬ ing interest has always clung, and strong as that attraction has been it is destined to be greater still in the future, as more attention is paid by each succeeding generation to the formative period of national life. More and more it is coming to be realized that America has a history which underlies the catalogue of her wars and political wrangles; a history that, because of the conditions amid 105 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA which it developed and the problems it solved, contains an interest to rival the story of any other nation. Nothing is better fitted to be a symbol of that narrative than the log cabin, for if but one such habitation and its contents had survived we could, with no other knowledge whatsoever of the period it represented, reconstruct from it and its furnishings the qualities, habits and methods of those early people with a striking approximation to the truth. Log cabins were always, when possible, built by com¬ munity effort. On an appointed day the neighbors of the man who needed a house appeared on the spot se¬ lected, inquired the intended dimensions of the cabin, and began chopping down seventy or eighty of the tallest and straightest small trees in the immediate neighborhood. 1 A common size for the house was about twenty feet long by sixteen feet wide, often with a low room, or upper floor, under the sloping roof. When the felled trees had been chopped into proper lengths the logs thus made were rolled to the site picked out. These preliminary processes required two or three days. Two logs each sixteen feet long 2 and of greater thick¬ ness than the others were then put in position twenty feet apart, and at each end of each log a deep notch was cut on the upper surface extending through about one-third of its diameter. Two other logs, each twenty feet long and correspondingly thick were next fitted with notches at the ends, both above and below, and were laid on the first pair, into which their lower notches dovetailed. A foundation was thus obtained that lifted the body of the cabin some three feet above the ground. About a dozen slender logs 1 The most common trees of the southern forest were the oak, cottonwood, mulberry, hickory, sycamore, persimmon, ash, locust, tulip, walnut, fir, birch, pine, chestnut, maple, beech and hemlock. 2 If the cabin was to be of the dimensions named, as is supposed in this description. 106 29.—After the ax had passed. The stumps were left to rot. Only a trifling fraction of the timber was needed for fences, fuel, cabins and home-made furniture. The fallen trees covered the ground and had to be burned where they fell. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA sixteen feet long and usually ten inches in diameter were laid at regular intervals, so that they extended from one of the twenty-foot logs to the other. These were to serve as a support for the thin slabs of wood 1 that were later to be laid on them as a floor. The process with large logs al¬ ready described was then recommenced, each tier notched and fitting into the transverse timbers above and below until the walls had been built to a height about seven feet above the floor. Another row of slender logs was added at this point as the top of the lower room and the floor of the one above. Three or four courses of heavy trees, as before, completed the body of the structure. At either end of the upper framework a stout little tree, about six feet tall and so cut as to present two short diverging limbs at the top, was set up, and from one such crotch to another the ridge pole was placed in position. The roof itself was formed by wide slabs of wood hewed bodily out of large trees 2 and placed on the topmost tier of side-logs with their upper ends converging and resting on the ridge pole. To keep the roof slabs in position a long log was laid over their lower ends at each side of the cabin. Its extremities rested on the upper tier of end-logs, which had been kept unusually long for this purpose, 3 and it was in turn held secure by means of heavy wooden pins. Other timbers were placed over the roof slabs in similar manner, and the body of the cabin was complete. The doors and windows were sawed out after all logs were in place, and their edges were cased with slabs to keep the walls from sagging. There was no glass, and all openings were protected by strong doors. The window panes were made of paper — when it could be obtained — 1 Called puncheons by the pioneers. 3 This process was one of extreme labor. 3 See picture reproduced. 108 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA plentifully coated with hogs’ lard or bear grease. The big fireplace was constructed of large flat stones, and the chimney was built of sticks laid in the same alternating manner as were the timbers of the house, with the chinks of the chimney structure filled and covered with clay that was soon hardened by the heat. All spaces between the logs were then stopped up with mud and moss and gener¬ ally plastered over with clay in addition. Slabs were laid for the floors, a perpendicular ladder of five or six rounds served as a staircase, and the domicile was finished. The whole job ordinarily took about a week, but was often done in less time if six or eight men were busy in the work. Not a scrap of metal had entered into its con¬ struction. It was wholly a product made from materials found within a quarter of a mile of the spot where it stood ready for occupancy. The furnishings of the cabin were as simple as the structure itself. Sometimes the chairs were short sections sawed from the trunk of a hickory tree, 1 but often they were more ornate and pretentious affairs, consisting of a slab of green wood stuck on top of three legs. One type of table was a similar contrivance, but with four legs, and movable. The other sort was built permanently against the wall at one side, with its other edge on sticks. The bed frame was usually held up at one side by supports driven into the wall. On it were laid the inevitable slabs, and then a bedtick filled with chaff, pine needles or dried moss. Up-stairs, if there was an up-stairs, were more beds, and smoked meat and dried herbs that hung from the roof. Pillow covers and sheets were almost unknown. Of blankets, though, there was usually an abundance. Beside the larded window through which the sunshine came with 1 Such a chair was called a “block.” 109 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA golden mellowness stood a home-made spinning-wheel, and on puncheon shelves around the walls were a few dishes, pots and kettles. Near the fireplace and doorway hung rifles and yellow powder horns, and somewhere, perhaps, there was a comb and bit of looking-glass. But there was a limit to extravagance. Forks and spoons were either whittled out of wood or made by a blacksmith, and the knives served for a large variety of other purposes that need not be discussed. One other feature of the cabin that deserves mention was a habit often displayed by the floor and furniture. Owing to the haste with which everything was built the flat slabs of wood that entered so largely into the construction of the home were usually put in place while still in a green state, and the heat from the big fireplace caused them to warp amazingly. A bed so made would soon undulate beneath its occupants like the waves of the sea; the dinner would all slide to the center of the table and the floor would curl up like a porcupine. Each little settlement constituted an independent and self-supporting establishment 1 and the cabin itself was a veritable industrial institution. The man, or some neigh¬ bor more skilled than he in metal working, made his rifle, ax, hoe and sickle. Ploughs were usually brought into the wilderness from a coast town, though occasionally they were forged on the spot. The head of the family made all the house furnishings, his wife’s loom and spinning-wheel, shaped dishes out of wood, and contrived a hand-mill for grinding corn. The hominy block was a piece of hickory tree trunk with a bowl-shaped depression burned into it at one end. The boys helped their father in all such things, 1 A wilderness settlement produced all its own necessities of life excepting powder, lead, salt and iron. Salt was made at several places in the colonies where salt springs had been found, and from thence laboriously carried over the country, by boat as far as possible. Wild honey served for sugar. 110 _The home and clearing of a backwoodsman. It was a gash cut in the universal forest, with a cabin and farm buildings made of logs. 1 I LO o ~~ —' — ■ ~ W '-.I..:v4, ![ ’ : '"' :i '. ' i'vv^VO- ' • . .- - *. • -... ■- - -• ?;••' ■■•■.■';■■. tv ■ ., : T v ; fS*r•;•->’ -. - - • ■' *v ?|ife •■•<<.. :.- : i-ys^vT'; f: JfflAl. ■■ " ■J'" : '/'r--;’ §9 1 i.t :'? - r;j5 • •■'■•■'' '. VT?2s >* w'.•»>.*'. r- ■; HSis / ■ fevv z\ ,-,■[ : , , »4K?T i : ' ,t>,. •; -,.';..-.,•',>*£$g 5 »•'.>••, ?y. -.^J-'.^rj , ' * r •■“ '■'■* laSPfV^ Bk ^■'v;: '’ '.V';' , ,J ,r‘,’>. iVw ' .;;•-?< }•' "-.> ,; **> - . ' < -;•;. T|VSf|g|t^ ■ V .'» : -V ■ \ \rt^$ fcy Ml **Vy ; V < < n ?.» V: ’ A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA and dried the strips of venison over the fire 1 after the day’s work in the open was done. As each new baby arrived its elder brothers made a cradle of bark for the little stranger. When the man wanted a new suit of clothes he tanned and worked deer and raccoon skins into pliability and turned them over to his wife, who cut them and sewed them to¬ gether. Such a suit was considered to fit well if it did not hamper its owner’s movements in any way . 2 His cap was of skin with the fur on, and his shoes were soft moccasins, as were the foot coverings of all the family. Cloth was called linsey-woolsey, and was a mixture of flax and wool made by the wife by carding and spinning. From it she created her jacket, petticoat and poke bonnet. Once in a while she made coats and trousers for her husband or the boys out of the same home-made fabric. The girls helped their mother in her household manufacturing, knit their own heavy stockings and made similar socks for the men. They also cut and sewed the bedticks and filled them, collected pine knots to serve as lamps in the summer evenings, made the soap, learned how to distinguish such herbs as were used as remedies in time of sickness, and hung them up to dry. Actual money was a thing of fable, having no place in such a community. If a man by some strange chance came into possession of those curious pieces of copper or silver he hastened to swap them for something of practical use, and kept to himself his opinion of the man who took them. All necessities of life had their accepted ratios of value to one another, and needed things were got by barter. 1 It was then called “jerked meat,” and was hung up under the roof for future use. 2 A deerskin suit was often decorated with fringes at the bottom of the coat and down the sides of the trousers. They were of similar skin cut into narrow ribbons and were sometimes dyed red or blue. City-made boots, any kind of a hat and coats with buttons on them were esteemed sure evidence of snobbishness and were severely frowned upon. 112 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Skins of all useful sorts came nearer to actual currency than anything else. Powder, salt, iron, and lead for bullets were brought in from distant towns on the coast or to the northward, and were carried overland in as large quantities as the nature of the country would permit. Powder, in the cities, was worth about two dollars and a half a pound and lead about sixteen cents. When the hill people needed fresh stocks of such things they sent out bales of skins by some of their number , 1 and in that way got the few commodities they could not produce themselves. There was an intimate relationship between all these conditions and the travel impulse that so suddenly sprang into existence from amid them. For the social organiza¬ tion here described was the only one that could success¬ fully have conducted such a movement. It was as though some far-seeing power had long since planned a westward advance of the population, and, without disclosing its pre¬ determined purpose, had trained the people for the part they were to play in history. No army of soldiers could have made the journey on which the cabin dwellers of the southern mountains were soon to set forth. It was a task far beyond the ability of military discipline merely, and the larger the force of trained automatons which had attempted it, the speedier and more complete would have been the disaster that must have followed. The westward advance through the wilderness was one of those few instances of record in which the attendant con¬ quest was made, not primarily by the force of weapons, but by the adaptability of the invaders to their new surround¬ ings and a resourcefulness as self-sustaining domestic arti- 1 The pack-train method of travel by means of which this intercourse was carried on will be described in a later chapter. 113 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA sans rather than as warriors. Such conquests are always vital to the region affected. A military army scars the land that feels its presence, but after a time it either retreats, or, ceasing to be an army, is absorbed by the country it has reached, and its visit becomes a para¬ graph in text-books. But when in earlier times white men of Anglo-Saxon stock resolved on an expedition from which there could be no retreat, and to whose success there must be no alternative, they did not begin it with guns and food alone. Instead, they burdened themselves down with their women and children, dogs, pots, pans and cattle, and started into the unknown. The eras of such spectacles are past, and considering them from these later days it can be understood how needless were the fears with which more timid souls sometimes looked on such hegiras. The multitudinous details of human, inani¬ mate, and four-legged baggage that paralyzed speed and seemed to presage failure were the elements that made success inevitable. Without them the men could have returned. The first symptom of the permanent invasion of the region beyond the mountains was seen in 1771 and 1772, when a little stream of people drifted down toward the southwest from Pennsylvania and northern Virginia into the broad valley that is bounded on the west by the Cum¬ berland Mountains and on the east by the Unaka or Great Smoky range. Through it ran the various branches of the Clinch and Holston Rivers, that empty into the Tennessee. 1 The men travelled under the trees on foot, while the women and household goods were loaded on the horses, and the elder children drove the cows and pigs. It was a journey that, 1 Heretofore referred to in these pages as the Cherokee River. 114 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA save in its greater length, was in many respects a repetition of the march of Pastor Hooker and his congregation through the wilds of Massachusetts a hundred and thirty- five years before. The political boundaries of the colonies were rather vague in those times, and the people of these little bands, knowing that the upper part of the valley was a part of Virginia, thought the region where they stopped to build their cabins and make clearings in the forest was also in that colony. It was not, but was theo¬ retically under the jurisdiction of North Carolina, and was later to become the extreme eastern part of the present state of Tennessee. They were so far removed from any other civilization, and so much out of the reach of any government that they soon proceeded with all deliberation 115 31.—Usual type of a cabin dweller’s home. The method of building such a house is described in this chapter. Habitations like this were the abodes of nearly all Americans, except town-people, for a century and a half. Pioneer Life in the West, I _ A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA to set up in their valley a little republic of their own. It was called Wautaga, 1 from a small stream that empties into the Holston River, and it had a formal written constitution, 2 which was the first instrument of the sort drawn up by Americans west of the mountains. The affairs of the state were administered by a legislature of thirteen men. Five of these were appointed to carry on the executive and judicial business of the republic. Courts were organized with stated sittings, and an instance of their authority and methods lies in the case of a horse thief who was arrested on a Monday, tried on Wednesday and hanged on Friday. Wautaga negotiated formal treaties with surrounding nations of Indians, and for six years its machinery of government successfully administered all its affairs, while the people themselves built their cabins and blockhouses, felled the forest, raised crops and fought against the In¬ dians whenever war with the natives occurred. 3 On one occasion hostilities between the red men and Wautaga broke out with such suddenness that the settlers had to run pell-mell to a fort without thought of saving any of their possessions. When finally behind shelter with whole skins they began to consider what they had left in the cabins, and somebody cried out that they had forgotten the Bibles in the church. Forthwith a sally-party was or¬ ganized and left the stockade to secure the volumes, while the rest of the population awaited in suspense the result of the attempt. Shots were heard at intervals, and at last A> 1 Also spelled Watauga and Wataga. 2 The phraseology of the document unfortunately has not survived. 3 The principal Indians of the South were the five Appalachian confederacies called the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks and Seminoles. They lived principally in permanent settlements, and were not nomadic in the sense that many other tribes were. Their number is believed to have reached about 70,000. The tribe with which the early white invaders of the South had the most trouble was the Cherokees, who lived in the mountains of Tennessee, the Carolinas, Alabama and Georgia. In all its essential features and underlying causes the border warfare in the South between the two races resembled the troubles in the North that have been described. 116 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the men were seen to be on their way back with every appearance of triumph. A jubilation attended their re¬ turn and the demonstration of joy was soon discovered to be justified. For the party had not only rescued the Bibles, but had stopped on the way back and scalped eleven In¬ dians. This was in 1776. Two vears afterward North Carolina took charge of things and the sovereignty of the little backwoods republic disappeared for all time. Shortly before the incident of Wautaga there had en¬ tered into this history one of its two commanding human figures. His name was Daniel Boone, and in his personal¬ ity and exploits were centered the beginning of the events with which we have now to deal. CHAPTER VIII POPULAR IGNORANCE OF THE COUNTRY BEYOND THE ALLE- GHANIES — DANIEL BOONE COMES ON THE SCENE — HOW HE GOT HIS LOVE OF FORESTS AND SOLITUDE — EIGHT GO AWAY AND TWO COME BACK — THE RESOLVE OF THE CABIN DWELLERS — BEGINNING OF THE WESTWARD COURSE OF EMPIRE — A CARAVAN ON THE MARCH — A TEMPORARY CHECK — THE SCHEME OF THE TRANSYLVANIA COMPANY T HERE were three principal reasons that impelled thirty thousand people of the South to turn their backs on established homes within the space of a few years and “wander through the wilderness of America in quest of the country of Kentucke.” 1 One cause was the comparative congestion of the population immediately to the eastward of the unseen land; a second was strong popular protest against illegal taxes and the display of luxury based on oppression; 2 the third was an interest suddenly born of tales that described the character of the West. A few other minor elements contributed toward the impulse, but these three factors in the life of the cabin dwellers, all coming simultaneously into operation, started the travel through the forests. It is hard to realize that an almost complete ignorance of the region west of the Alleghany Mountains continued among the English speaking population until such a little 1 Boone’s quaint description of the movement. 2 For an extended understanding of the domestic troubles of the North Carolina peo¬ ple see “Historical Sketches of North Carolina,” by John H. Wheeler. 118 x O >1 '-t 3 P n _ P n hq P M c:. cd a p >-i _ p 3 CL 3 re re 3“ X, rt ►« ^ C/3 _ P ~ CL 3 re c rt ■"* re 3* » orq ~ •f a> = O- D- — O P re 7 T n ?r 3 “ S 2-g 3“ ►h“ee i-t n> c 2^o 3" O c C/3 rt> 3" re * 3 « 3 c re c/3 CL C rt 'c p C/3 S P C/3 cr c o 3 < — ■ o. 3' ►—* • n> 3 l ~! (T3 re r> r~f- cr re o CL o ca¬ re 3 P P JO 3 P re "H- (T> < p o P fD r*t- o’ o 3 re C ora re j A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA while ago as 1767. 1 For nearly a hundred and fifty years the colonists had bustled up and down the coast of the continent; the wilderness had given way to cities, towns and farms; Indian trails had grown into busy roads that served as arteries for a rapidly growing travel and com¬ merce. On the west of the narrow little strip so occupied stood a few parallel ranges of low mountains and beyond them — mystery. Speaking of that strange condition a few years after it had ceased to exist, the state of affairs which prevailed in 1767 was described by Chief Justice John Marshall in the following words: “The country beyond the Cumberland Mountain, still appeared to the dusky view of the generality of the people of Virginia, almost as ob¬ scure and doubtful, as America itself to the people of Europe, before the voyage of Columbus. A country there was — of this none could doubt, who thought at all; but whether land or water, mountain or plain, fer¬ tility or barrenness, preponderated — whether inhabited by men or beasts, or both, or neither, they knew not. If inhabited by men, they were sup¬ posed to be Indians — for such had always infested the frontiers. And this had been a powerful reason for not exploring the region west of the great Mountain, which concealed Kentucky from their sight.” If the cabin people of the South seem to have been un¬ wittingly trained for the task they were now T to accomplish, so was Daniel Boone in like manner fitted by inheritance and personal experience for his own individual work of leading the march of a population through a wilderness. 2 1 In 1750 Doctor Thomas Walker, of Virginia, made a trip to the headwaters of the Kentucky River and discovered Cumberland Gap. Christopher Gist visited the Scioto River as early as 1751. In 1765 George Croghan descended the Ohio, and in 1766 James Smith explored parts of Kentucky and Tennessee. But the general public knew little of these expeditions. 2 His grandfather before him—parent of nine sons and ten daughters—had left England because that country seemed to be getting too crowded for him. He wanted more room, so he came to America in 1717 with nine sons and two daughters, and bought a tract of land in Pennsylvania near a frontier post in Bucks County. There Daniel’s father was married and lived, also with a wife and eleven children, until about the year 1752 or 1753, when he in turn felt the need of wider spaces and became one of those who joined the previously mentioned migrations toward the South. Daniel — the date of whose birth is uncertain, but which was possibly in 1732 or 1735 — was some eighteen or twenty years old when this pilgrimage took place. His youth had been spent in the neces¬ sary manner of the time, and he had already shown somewhat of those qualities of lead¬ ership in the affairs of frontier life that were later to be so much more strikingly dis¬ played. The march of the Boone family was through the forests of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina to the locality of its future home in the western part of the Old North State near the South Yadkin, a branch of the larger river bearing the same name. There Daniel was married and became the father of nine children. 120 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA To a well-defined hereditary instinct that demanded freedom of movement and wide areas for action had been added a youth spent on the frontier and the experience, gained at the most impressionable period of life, while his father’s family was journeying through the woods. Be¬ sides all this he was fascinated by speculation regarding the country that lay beyond the mountains, to whose east¬ ward base he often penetrated during his earlier years on the Yadkin. These qualities are believed to have resulted in a number of extensive trips toward the west for exploring and hunting purposes that may have begun as early as 1760, 1 some of which were made in company with other men and some alone. But of these half legend¬ ary expeditions nothing certain can be said. As of a large proportion of the events of the time, no contemporary evidence of them exist. Human life and action are lost behind the veil that hides those years like a thistledown that has floated away in the wind. But with the year 1769 there begins in the pathmaker’s career a period of known things. It beheld the com¬ mencement of a journey by Boone which was to arouse all the North Carolina and Virginia cabins and suggest to the dissatisfied population a means whereby they might, with one stroke, be rid of their troubles and solve the mystery of the West. In May of that year a party of six men, of whom Boone was leader, set out to penetrate far beyond the mountains into the country south of the Ohio 1 On a beech tree that stood near the Wautaga River in the extreme eastern corner of Tennessee and west of the Great Smoky Mountains until as late as the early years of the nineteenth century, could be seen the following ancient inscription cut by the knife of a hunter: D. Boon Cill ED A BAR On ThE Tree In yEAR 1760 121 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA River. 1 For more than a month the woodsmen travelled steadily to the westward and on the seventh day of June, after several hours spent in ascending a low range of hills, they reached the top of an eminence and saw stretching away beneath them an immense and luxuriant country spread out like a map and watered by a pleasant river. Even as they looked upon the scene, and realized that their quest was done, they beheld innumerable bison and deer moving over the open spaces that lay like islands amid the sea of cane-brakes and woods. The spot from which they gazed down into the country of “Kentucke” is believed to be in Morgan County, of that state. Here the wanderers made camp and lived and hunted for more than six months. They were in that neutral territory used by the Indians of both the North and the South as a hunting ground, and not permanently occupied by natives of any tribe. Though the red men must have known of their long journey and presence they were not molested until December, when Boone and Stuart, while on an excursion, were suddenly made prisoners. They were intruders in the sight of the Indians, who treated them with kindness and displayed no other design than to take them out of the country. On the seventh night of the captivity Boone contrived their escape without attack¬ ing the sleeping natives, and the two white men returned with caution to their camp. The other four were not there, nor from that day did any man have knowledge of them. Nevertheless the two persisted in remaining, and in the following month, while they were hunting in the woods, a younger brother of Boone 2 and another white man J The other members of the expedition were John Finley (or Findley), James Moncey, Joseph Holden, William C ool and John Stuart. All were experienced frontiersmen, and, like Boone, had made previous trips in the same drection. 2 He was Squire Boone, named after his father. The identity of the other man is unknown. 122 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA from the Yadkin calmly walked up to them. That meet¬ ing in the wilderness was an instance of the ability with which backwoodsmen came to practise the art of wood¬ craft. Squire Boone and his companion had come four hundred miles through unknown forests and found the objects of their search, of whose whereabouts they had no previous knowledge. 1 Soon after this incident Stuart was killed by Indians. That left three. Then Squire’s unknown companion failed to come back one night, and of the eight who had left North Carolina there remained only Daniel Boone and his brother. Still the survivors persisted in their sojourn, repre¬ sentatives of a race that was never afterward to relinquish the land. By May the ammunition of the brothers ran low and Squire spent three months in a trip to North Carolina to replenish their stock, rejoining Daniel in July. During those months Daniel Boone, solitary premonitor of white supremacy, not only evaded captivity or death by the exercise of a skill quite beyond present understanding, but actively explored central Kentucky. He gained an intimate acquaintance with the country in all its features. Of this period Boone afterward went so far as to say: “I confess I never before was under greater necessity of ex¬ ercising philosophy and fortitude. A few days I passed uncomfortably.” Such was his comment on a situation in which any ordinary man might have been killed in twenty-four hours or else have starved to death in a week. 2 In March of 1771, after an absence of almost two years in the wilderness, Boone suddenly appeared unscathed among his neighbors on the Yadkin. 1 Boone’s family had begun to be concerned about him, and had sent Squire to take more ammunition to the absent one. 2 Though game existed in abundance, every shot made to secure food was a proclama¬ tion of his presence and whereabouts. 123 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA It can readily be imagined with what interest Boone was greeted on his return from such a journey. His neigh¬ bors were almost excited. The time was one in which acts of valor were performed by many men, but his exploit stood out alone. It lifted him to a very high place in the estimation of those who knew of him, for the people among whom he lived were keen in estimating the char¬ acter and metal of their fellows. But the degree of bravery and ability that the man had displayed was overshadowed by another feature of the expedition which his tale pre¬ sented. His elaborate description of the distant region into which he had penetrated was so inviting that its de¬ sirability as a place for white habitation was apparent, and at once took first place in the public consideration given to the exploit. Mere bravery had always been ob¬ tainable to any extent when wanted, but here was some¬ thing much more rare — news of a fair country where men such as they could live free lives, uncrowded by con¬ ditions that irked them. The fact that but two had come back of the eight who had gone away was of little conse¬ quence. Such things were trifles with which the people had always been familiar. They knew that more children would come to take the places of men that vanished and so, in time, they would win. The perils of the forest they could endure, but to hardships imposed on them by other white men they would not submit. And as though to clinch the matter Boone declared his determination to take his family into the far country where he had wandered. His example was soon followed by similar declara¬ tions, and as the narrative of the returned traveller made its slow way through the scattered population and its significance grew into the minds of the cabin dwellers, 124 'S&yt. Wm' Q//rfa.W At/ A#4pfor ,y//tt,U'rfo V » /Af i^cw. fj i. f/w ft rr/t/nrtct. j*//tr Anf/t/tr ofo/An mnwra The Plan oPthc tipper Story. A « Ww-fo-vt'S" : As/'r.yor 4annon.. B 'Mej/trcftAtt : C*'Me /rtfot —f/kwr. ir//t-/t/frm>mt'rr 1 jsti f/t \ /r>ttte? >. '■fortf/ntf/tY. E ,/ 7 tr (fforrrftj. .fottt r/mttnY. Y'-Y/tt (xtf/rvu/t/trr Sort. (r J/tf '/ft nr/ort‘- M^r/rj mtrde .stt //>t f/nnr. A /tt'r tt/tort j/tr '* j t ^nr^ut/tytrr/rt (r\ ft./ a./ta rtt/tr/, 'Jf'S/'fi/ rt/M Hie Plan of die Ground Floor . -/ /ur/t.t*forr fantinn ■-,' B ' y/ts /tw /t/nft . f'/y/tr/yAwr. /J./fc//rr/Artn.t . A Scale of Feet 33.—Internal arrangement and plan of the preceding blockhouse. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA there arose and spread through the North Carolina and Virginia hills that final influence which was to start the American people on their long westward march. The next two years were spent in a discussion of the impending exodus and in preparation for it. Though many were anxious to get away from the conditions that burdened them, and eager to find new homes in the dis¬ tant Kentucky region, the contemplated migration could not be commenced offhand. The cabin people owned tne little log huts and clearings where they lived, and their properties could not be altogether sacrificed. Such a radical and unparallelled shift demanded forethought and much preliminary arrangement, even on the part Qf a population so fertile in expedient and adaptibility as they were. At last seven families were ready, including the households of Daniel and Squire Boone, and after plans had been made by which the remaining five and a consid¬ erable number of other men were to join the Boones in a nearby valley, the day came for the start. It was on September 25, 1773, 1 that the course of empire began to take its westward way from the banks of the Yadkin. The Boones were joined by the remainder of the party accord¬ ing to arrangement, and when the two divisions of the ex¬ pedition had united the cavalcade consisted of seven fami¬ lies, including women and numerous children of various ages, and about forty individual men. At the head of the column marched a group of woods¬ men, all, of course, bearing rifles. Some strode on foot, but many of them —perhaps the majority — were mounted on horses that walked slowly along. They wore loose hunting shirts and trousers of dressed deerskins, 1 According to Speed, in “The Wilderness Road,” and probably correct, though Hart¬ ley, in his “Life,” puts the day exactly one year later. 126 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA gayly decorated with the colored fringes so widely affected as a backwoods fashion. Their feet were clad in moc¬ casins and on their heads were many sorts of fantastic caps of skins, or of linsey-woolsey, each fashioned according to the whim of its owner. Every man was girt by a leather belt, from the right side of which hung a tomahawk to be used either as a hatchet or for some more violent purpose. On his left side he carried his hunting knife, a full powder horn, a leather pouch of home-made bullets and another larger leather pouch holding a quart or two of parched corn. 1 Each man’s rifle lay with apparent carelessness within the crook of his elbow, but as he moved onward his glance swept ceaselessly — almost unknowingly — from side to side, pausing with each swing to dwell for an instant on the distance ahead. Behind this foreguard came the pack animals led by other similarly garbed men or boys, and bearing the women, small children, provi¬ sions and household goods. The women sat either on pillion saddles similar to those of the North or rode astride, as they pleased. The younger children swung in wicker baskets made from hickory withes, and two or three horses were thus loaded with the next generation, whose members had nothing to do but eat hoe-cake and count the trees. Behind the pack animals came a small drove of pigs and several cattle — those ingredients of a domestic cara¬ van that regulate its speed — and flanking the farm ani¬ mals were still other men on horseback to keep them from straying from the proper path. A few rifle members of the expedition marched as a rear-guard behind all the rest. There was no iron-clad regularity about the progress of the group that thus made its way through the forest. Its 1 Parched corn was an article of food always taken on forest expeditions. 127 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA individual members were constantly shifting as the men stopped to chat with the women, or as they argued with a reluctant pig, readjusted the ropes of bark that bound the burdens of the horses, or stole off into the woods to shoot a deer and bring back its carcass for the next meal. Dogs frisked about the legs of the horses, yelped with excitement as they found the scent of an animal in a nearby thicket, and distributed showers of spray after swimming some creek that the rest of the caravan had forded. The distance covered by the marchers in the course of a day varied with the nature of the country. Perhaps the average was about ten miles of advancement. In mid¬ afternoon a part of the band increased its speed a little to find a camping-place, leaving the stock in care of others who brought it in an hour or so after the foremost had chosen a spot for the night’s sojourn. Then each member of the expedition fell upon his appointed task. In an incredibly short time — so adept were they in such neces¬ sary duties — a snug shelter made from the limbs and foliage of trees was raised for the women and children; horses were relieved of their burdens and tethered; the stock was herded and put under guard; fires were kindled; water brought from a clear stream; huge slabs of venison were broiled on ramrods held over the hot coals; corn pones baked, and the day’s labor was done. The feast was a royal one, few and simple though its ingredients were, for toil such as theirs and the air they breathed bred appetites whose mere possession was itself a luxury. People did not nibble at dainty luncheons and munch macaroons in those days; they devoured their food as a fireman throws coal into a furnace, and for the identical reason. What they ate was the fuel that carried them 128 'I > § £ o" 2 . n nr hi » S' c n c >1 ft> a V. n c_ 3 -s u 2 * su ^ »j t/> 1 3 O CTQ rt < rs ^ 3 t/> 2 rt p W 5 ? “a r » s a. w fD a> 3* 5 M O 3 “> f-r -s tr » 5* 3 w " o 3 P O ►-• P ^ r!.n nr nr 0 o c C < 3 g q 5* c C c- -r 1 " “ (l to ft W | p •r p ^ ' ' QTQ g* s 5. p c- ™ 3 »q 3 t/s c p 3 3 S" c^q p „ 33 n >-t t/i o 3 W> I j| 1 II 1 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA onward. Man himself was the engine at that stage of travel. After the meal beside the camp-fire the petticoat and juvenile divisions of the wandering army disappeared beneath the lean-to. The leather-clad men stretched out their long legs around the blazing logs, lit their clay pipes and puffed big clouds of rank tobacco smoke up toward the stars until they fell asleep, while a few still figures, that almost blended with the shadows amid which they crouched, sat with rifles ready until another dawn sepa¬ rated the branches of the trees. No direful happening befell Boone’s people for two weeks, and their immunity from attack by Indians up to that time had gradually — perhaps to an extent imper¬ ceptible to themselves — resulted in a slackening of those methods by which danger of the sort was best to be avoided. At any rate, while they were approaching Cum¬ berland Gap on October 6 the men who were driving the stock allowed themselves to fall behind the main body by five or six miles — which was too far — and while the two divisions of the party were so separated the rear body was surprised by a band of Cherokees, and six of its seven members were killed. Among those cut off was Boone’s eldest boy, James, a fine young fellow of seventeen. The sound of the firing brought Boone and the rest back helter-skelter, but it was too late. This attack by the red men was significant of the attitude which the natives had long taken toward white movement along the whole border. They had previously allowed Boone and his small party of six to travel four hundred miles to the west, for on that occasion the whites were obviously hunters and did not, to the Indian mind, presage any general advance into or permanent occupancy of the terri- 130 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA tory so highly prized by the natives. But no sooner did the same white leader start into the forbidden region with women and children and every other plain proof of an intention to settle on the interior lands than the whites were attacked. The difference in the two groups was plain to the Indians. They looked on the white men as one tribe or allied tribes; white men’s treaties and prom¬ ises had often been broken, and now the proclamation of 1763 was in peril of violation also. 1 So the red men killed. It was their last resort against those strange, obsti¬ nate, grasping, palefaced people who seemed never con¬ tent to stay where they once settled, but were always edging just a few miles farther in the wrong direction. 2 Boone and the rest held a consultation after the attack and it was agreed to stop for a time in the most westward permanent white settlements, on the Clinch River in Virginia, and there await a better season and reinforce¬ ments before continuing the journey. This they did. There was no thought of abandoning the plan of pro¬ ceeding to Kentucky. The preparations being made by the people for their removal to the West had by this time come to the ears of those in authority in the two colonies affected by the agitation 3 and Governor Dunmore of Virginia, which state claimed all territory “West and Northwest” to the Mississippi River, promptly decided to find out whether che reports concerning the Kentucky region were true. So he organized for that purpose a party of frontiersmen 1 The Cherokees who attacked Boone’s column were the nation whose title to the land tliey held had been ignored by Johnson at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, despite his in¬ structions. 2 In the absence of native records it is, of course, possible to attribute the attitude of the Indians on this occasion to a different motive. Their attack may have been made merely for the pleasure of killing. A due consideration of conditions then existing, and of the past acts and character of both races must be our principal aid in determining which explanation is the more reasonable. 3 Boone’s presence in the Clinch River valley of Virginia after his temporary check spread still wider a knowledge of the western country. 131 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA and surveyors under the leadership of Captain Thomas Bullitt. Bullitt led his men over the trail to Pittsburgh, with which path through the wilderness he was familiar, and there the party built boats in which they went down the Ohio despite the dangers attending such a voyage at that time. Dunmore’s expedition arrived safely in the neighborhood of the future Louisville, built the usual 35.—Pioneer ferryman navigating a small canoe by means of a setting-pole. A sketch by Joshua Shaw. timber fort as a base of operations, explored a consider¬ able territory and found that Boone’s description of his discoveries was amply justified. The men under Bullitt observed with amazement the migrations of the bison, which travelled through the cane- brakes and forests in columns containing tens of thou- 132 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA sands. The wide roads thus made by the animals, who trampled veritable avenues through the wilderness, were at once adopted by the white men for their own use in journeying over the land and by them were called streets. From that time, and for many years afterward, buffalo streets were used as travel routes by settlers in that part of the country as they gradually pushed the herds west¬ ward. The paths created by armies of bison moving four or five abreast were driven so cleanly through the woods, and packed so firmly under the hoofs of the ponderous beasts that vegetation required years in which to reclaim them. While Bullitt’s men were still remote in the new country it became evident to Dunmore that widespread trouble with the natives was about to occur, and the governor found it necessary to send another party to warn them of the impending danger and if possible bring them back to civilization. 1 He therefore summoned Boone, and the pioneer was commissioned to attempt the task. Start¬ ing once more toward the West in June of 1774, Boone with one companion, reached the Bullitt party and con¬ ducted them safely back, making the round trip of over eight hundred miles in the remarkably short time of sixty- two days, an average of almost thirteen miles a day. 2 The expected hostilities soon began, and for a time no further important step in the impending exodus toward the West could be taken. Thus we get a glimpse of Dunmore’s 1 And a few other bold individuals who had ventured into the region on their own responsibility as a result of Boone’s recital. Among the others were James Harrod and some companions who had located where Harrodsburg now stands. Their camp was at first known as Harrod’s Town, or Old Town. The Harrod party held their ground for a time, though warned by Boone, and in July a party of them was attacked and dispersed. Ore man reached the Ohio River, hastily made a bark canoe, went down the Ohio and Mississippi in it and finally got back to Philadelphia by sea. Still another party which was in Kentucky at the time was that of John Floyd and seven others, who had gone down the Kanawha and Ohio in canoes to the present neigh¬ borhood of Louisville, to explore and survey. The Floyd party had been sent out by Colonel George Washington and Patrick Henry. Floyd mentions a sycamore tree 37 feet in circumference. He and his men got back to the Clinch River safely in August. 2 Boone nonchalantly speaks of having encountered “many difficulties” on the journey. 133 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA War as it affected affairs in the South. During the strug¬ gle Boone took an active part in the frontier military operations with the rank of captain. When peace had been made he went back to the settlement where his family was still waiting after the interrupted journey to Ken¬ tucky. From that point he was soon to start on the final enterprise that set in motion the general tide of westward travel. Among those to whom Boone’s exploits had most clearly revealed the future was a certain James Hender¬ son, a judge and man of prominence in North Carolina, who as a result of the returned explorer’s story had con¬ ceived the idea of acquiring and settling all the immense extent of country bounded by the Ohio, Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers. 1 For that purpose he, with eight others, organized an association known as the Transyl¬ vania Company, and got Boone to act as the representative of the company in dealing with the Indians for the de¬ sired tract. The coveted region, as distinguished from the neutral ground to the west and south of it, was claimed by the Cherokees, and to them Boone went. There is no story of what took place between him and the chiefs of the nation, but regarding several factors that led to the result of the meeting a reasonable certainty can be enter¬ tained. In the first place the red men had an admiration for Boone and respected him. He had conspicuously shown himself to be possessed of those attributes held by the natives in high esteem, whether possessed by friend or foe. It is also likely that the head men of the Cherokess read the signs of the times aright, and knew from past native experiences that if they did not then strike a bargain for the territory craved by the whites, and get 1 Some have even suggested that Boone may have first gone beyond the mountains at the request of Henderson. 134 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA something for it, they would in the end lose their land anyway, without recompense. At all events they agreed to sell. No sooner had the pledge been given than Boone hastened away to take a certain decisive action the per¬ formance of which had depended on the result of the negotiations, meanwhile sending word to Henderson of his success. These things happened either late in February or in the earliest days of March, 1775. As soon as Hender¬ son knew the way was clear for his company to proceed openly he hastened to Fort Wautaga, on a branch of the Holston River in North Carolina, and there on March 17, and in behalf of the Transylvania Company, he met twelve hundred natives in council and acquired the In¬ dian title to the country just described. 1 For the land he paid a price that has been variously estimated as low as ten wagon loads of cheap goods and whisky, 2 and as high as the equivalent of ten thousand pounds sterling. The work that Boone had hurried away to undertake was the making of the First Road through the wilderness. 1 He had been very quiet in the preliminary work, and the extent of his plan was unrealized either by the government or people. 2 The estimate of Dr. Smith, an English agent of Dunmore. CHAPTER IX BOONE’S WILDERNESS ROAD — FIRST TRAVEL ROUTE MADE BY WHITE MEN TO THE INTERIOR OF THE CONTINENT — THE WARRIORS’ PATH, AND HOW BOONE USED IT — WILLIAM CALK’S DIARY OF A JOURNEY TO CAINTUCK — ITS VALUE — WHAT THE FIRST MARCHERS DID WHEN THEY REACHED THE PROMISED LAND — THE FOOD QUESTION — SOME EFFECTS OF THE WILDERNESS ROAD ON THE FORTUNES OF THE REVOLTING COLONIES HE party which Boone gathered to aid him in laying out through the wilderness a plain way that could be followed by the emigration now to begin numbered about forty men in all. He and his woodsmen started westward from Fort Wautaga as soon as the natives had pledged themselves to hold the treaty with Henderson, leaving the Indians to await that gentleman’s arrival. Pack-horses 1 carried their necessary equipment and pro¬ visions, and a few negroes were included in the expedition to care for the animals and perform camp duties during the journey. The men carried axes. As they proceeded Boone chose the line of march, and indicated it as he went along by cutting deep notches in prominent trees with a tomahawk . 2 Behind him came 1 The pack-saddles used at the time were made from the forked branches of trees, and were bound to the animals by broad strips of deerskin. In order to fit a horse’s back the forked branches had to be of a certain peculiar shape. It is related that on one occa¬ sion an early preacher, while exhorting his people in a grove, stopped abruptly in the middle of his appeal to call the attention of the congregation to such a suitable fork in a near-by tree. 2 The marks so made were called “blazes,” and the process of thus including a line of travel was called “blazing the way,” or “blazing ahead.” 136 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA axmen who chopped down the small trees it was desir¬ able to remove, though all work of that sort was avoided when possible. A detour was always preferred by moving pioneers to the labor of hewing a swathe through the woods. The chief obstacles to be overcome were under¬ growth in the forest itself, or dense thickets on lands that held no large timber. Such growths were swept aside by the tomahawk or short-ax with hardly a pause in the slow speed of the party, and at the end of each day’s march the road they had followed lay open behind them. There was no thought in Boone’s mind of creating a route which would be practicable for wagons, for no such things were then used in that part of the country . 1 His idea was to make a road that would be plain for the use of horsemen, 1 Though wagons of a certain crude type had appeared in near-by localities to the east 137 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA footmen and drivers of live stock, even though the travel¬ lers upon it had never moved through the wilderness be¬ fore. Carrying out the leader’s plan as it went forward the party finally came to the Holston River at a point where a large island 1 lay, and there apparently it paused for a few days. During the first two weeks Boone had pro¬ ceeded through a country more or less familiar to all who were with him, for it had often been traversed bv hunting parties from settlements to the eastward. No definite path, however, had ever before been made through it by white men. While encamped on the Holston, Boone was joined by eight other frontiersmen and a few more negroes. Two of the new white recruits were Felix Walker and Captain Twetty, 2 and in his later reference to the journey Walker described Boone as “our pilot and conductor through the wilderness to the promised land.” Thus reinforced the party numbered some fifty souls, and on March 10th they again took up their progress through the woods, marking the trail with tomahawks and cutting down small timber on occasion. Still advancing in a general westwardly direction, through country he had seen on at least four previous trips, Boone and his men crossed the Clinch and Powell Rivers and came to Cumberland Gap, through which they passed. Here Boone’s route changed abruptly toward the north for a reason relating to a phase of early white travel already discussed. The Cherokees and other Indians of the South, and the Miamis and various native nations who lived north of the Ohio had for centuries made inter¬ mittent war on one another, and in times of peace had used 1 Called “Long Island.” 2 Twetty was killed during the march and Walker badly wounded. • 138 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the land of “Kentucke” as a neutral hunting ground. In their age-long travel back and forth for those purposes the red men had made, from Cumberland Gap on the south to a point on the Ohio just opposite the present Portsmouth, 1 one of the largest and most frequented In- 37.—A loaded pack-mule. The animal’s burden was conveyed in baskets made of woven willow or bark. Babies were also carried in such recep¬ tacles during journeys. Sketch by Joshua Shaw. dian trails on the continent. From the time of its first discovery by Caucasians this travel route of the Indians was called the Warriors’ Path. Boone turned into the Warriors’ Path, once again ap¬ propriating an Indian trail for white men’s use. He did 1 At the mouth of the Scioto, in Ohio. 139 —___U&U... ... A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA more. He adopted that native path into the very highway along which soon swept a white horde to overwhelm the race which created it. Advancing northward on the In¬ dian trace Boone followed it for about fifty miles through the region included in Knox and Clay counties, in the present state of Kentucky. Near where the town of Man¬ chester stands he left the native route and again veered toward the west, abandoning the red man’s trail for an equally well-defined street made by the bison. This wilderness avenue he used through the present Clay and Laurel counties until he came to Rockcastle River and then, still keeping on the bisons’ street, he turned north¬ ward once more and passed over the country now em¬ braced in Rockcastle and Madison counties until he came to the existing location of Boonesborough on the Ken¬ tucky River. There, on April 1st, he halted. The Indians had attacked his column twice, killing four of its mem¬ bers and wounding five others, but the work he had set out to do had been accomplished. 1 From the verge of the settlements in the East to the center of the unknown and long-sought land of “Kentucke” he had blazed a broad trail that any other man might follow, and the in¬ terior American wilderness had been penetrated for the first time according to a predetermined plan for its perma¬ nent white occupation. The work had not been one of un¬ usual labor or hardship to the men who had performed it, for they were accustomed to such effort and danger, and Boone’s adoption of existing Indian and bison routes for a considerable part of the distance had saved much time and trouble. But the significance of the newly created road in its relation to economic and political events that were soon to follow was great indeed. 1 The road was at first known as “Boone’s Trace.” 140 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA A log fort was at once begun, 1 and on April 15th Boone sent a message to Judge Henderson telling the Transylvania Company of his success. In it he said: “My advice to you, sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are willing to stay and venture their lives with you; and now is the time to flusterate their [the Indians’] intentions, and keep the country whilst we are in it. If we give way to them now, it will ever be ths case.” Henderson soon arrived, accompanied by nearly forty more men, many pack-horses and considerable equipment necessary for frontier life. 2 The reinforcement so de¬ lighted Boone that he hurried back to the Clinch River for his family and other settlers, convinced that the long awaited time for a general advance was at hand. He was right. The people of the settlements received his an¬ nouncement of conditions in the “Kentucke” region with a satisfaction equal to his own, and in September or October he started westward again over the Wilderness Road that he had himself created, at the head of the first community caravan which was to make the march in uninterrupted security. His companions were twenty-six men, four women, half a dozen children in baskets and the usual live stock. At the head of this cavalcade, identical in its picturesque appearance with the one stopped by Indians on a previous occasion, he travelled safely through the forests, and at last the voices of white women, the laughter of children, the melancholy call of cattle and the squealing of pigs were heard in the promised land. By 1 The fort was about 250 feet long by 150 feet in breadth. At each corner was a house about 20 feet square and two stories high, built of hewn logs. The four houses were connected by a continuous stockade of pointed timbers planted side by side. Along the interior of the stockade on all its sides were rows of cabins built of rough logs. The gates were thick slabs of timber hung on wooden hinges. The fort was finished on June 14th. 2 He had started with a few wagons, but had to abandon them at the outset. 141 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the end of the year several hundred people were estab¬ lished at Boonesborough, Harrod’s Town and other settlements which at once sprang into being. It is not to be imagined that Boone’s Trace was in any respect an easy road to travel, in spite of the fact that families and their belongings began to move over it from the first days of its existence. It was easy only in com¬ parison with the untouched and unexplored wilderness, through which one man alone could never have conveyed his household by his unaided strength. That was why so many people had to march together on the Wilderness Road, even after the element of danger from Indians had been eliminated from the journey. By proceeding in the old community method the mishap of one individual could be remedied by all the rest, and only in that way was organized travel possible over it. Fortunately for a modern conception of the difficulties with which a trip from the eastern settlements to “Kentucke” was made at the period in question, there exists an original diary in which the journey is described. It was written by William Calk, of Virginia, who started from Prince William county in that state on March 13, 1775, and reached Boone’s fort on April 20th. Calk was one of those who went westward with Judge Henderson. No better way can be found of describing the travel conditions that then prevailed throughout the country — except on the few established highways of the Atlantic seaboard — than by quoting from Calk’s record. 1 Some of his experiences were set down in the following manner: 1775, Mon. 13th — I set out from prince wm. to travel to Cam- tuck on tuesday Night our company all got together at Mr. Priges on 1 Calk’s original diary is still in possession of his Kentucky descendants. It was in¬ corporated by Thomas Speed in his monograph on the Wilderness Road, published by the Filson Club, from which the extracts here quoted are taken. 142 38 .—Backwoodsman putting his wife on a pack-horse in preparation for a journey. Sketch by Joshua Shaw A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA rapadon which was Abraham hanks philip Drake Eanock Smith Robert Whitledge and my Self thear Abrams Dogs leg got broke by Drakes Deg. Wednesday, 15th,—We started early from priges made a good Days travel and lodge this night at Mr. Cars on North fork James River. Thursday, 16th—We started early it rained Chief part of the day Snowed in the Eavening very hard and was very Coaid we traveled all day and got to Mr. Blocks at the foot of the Blue Ridge. Friday 17th—We started early cross the Ridge the wind Blowsz very hard and cold and lodge at James lovls. Monday 20th — We start early cross the ferry and lodge this night at Wm. Adamses on the head of Catauby. Wedns 22nd —We start early and git to foart Chissel whear we git some good loaf Bread and good whiskey. fryday 24th—we start early and turn out of the wagon Road to go across the mountains to go by Danil Smiths we loose Driver Come to a turable mountain that tired us all almost to death to git over it and we lodge this night on the Lawrel fork of holston under a granite mountain and Roast a fine fat turkey for our suppers and Eat it without aney Bread. Satrd 25th—We start early over Some more very Bad mountains one that is called Clinch mountain and we git this night to Danil Smiths on Clinch and there we staid till thursday morning on tuesday night and Wednesday morning it snowed Very hard and was very Coaid and we hunted a good deal there while we staid in Rough mountains and kild three deer and one turkey Eanock Abram and I got lost tuesday night and it a snowing and Should a lain in the mountains had not I a had a pocket compas by which I got in a littel in the night and fired guns and they heard them and cairn in By the Repoart. thusd 30th — We set out again and went down to Elk gardin and there suplid our Selves With Seed Corn and irish tators then we went on a littel way I turned my hors to drive before me and he got scard ran away threw Down the Saddel Bags and broke three of our powder goards and Abrams beast Burst open a walet of corn and lost a good Deal and made a turrabel flustration amongst the Reast of the Horses Drakes mair run against a sapling and noct it down we cacht them all again and went on and lodged at John Duncans. fryd 31st — We suplyed our Selves at Dunkans with a 103 pounds of Bacon and went on again to Brileys mill and suployed our Selves with meal 1 and lodged this night on Clinch By a large cainbraike and cuckt our Supper. April Saturday 1st—This morning there is ice at our camp half inch thick we start early and travel this Day along a verev Bad hilley way cross one creek whear the horses almost got mired some fell in and all wet 1 In the Clinch River valley. The travellers’ last chance to supply themselves with pro¬ visions other than game. 144 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA their loads we cross Clinch River and travell till late in the Night and camp on Cove Creek having two men with us that wair pilates. 1 mond 3rd — We start early travel Down the valey cross powels river go some through the woods without aney track 2 cross some Bad hills git in to hendersons Road 3 camp on a creek in powels valey. Tuesday 4th — Raney we Start about 10 oclock and git down to Capt. martins in the valey where we over take Col. henderson and his Company Bound for Caintuck and there we camp this Night there they were Broiling and Eating Beef without Bread. Wednesday 5th — Breaks away fair and we go down the valey and camp on indian Creek we had this creek to cross maney times and very bad banks Abrams saddel turned and the load all fell in we got out this Eavening and kill two Deer. thursd 6th — this morning is a hard frost and we wait at Camp for Col. henderson and company to come up they come up about 12 oclock and we goin with them and camp there still this night waiting for some part of the company that had their horses ran away with their packs. fryday 7th — this morning is a very bad snowey morning we still continue at Camp being in number about 40 men and some neagros this Eaven. Comes a letter from Capt. Boone 4 at caintuck of the indians doing mischief and some turns back. Saturday 8th — We all pack up and started crost Cumberland gap about one oclock this Day Met a good many peopel turned back for fear of the indians but our Company goes on Still with good courage we came to a very ugly Creek with steep Banks and have to cross it several times on this Creek we camp this night. tuesday nth — this is a very loury morning and like for Rain but we all agree to start Early and we cross Cumberland River and travel Down it about 10 miles through some turrabel cainbrakes as we went down Abrams mair Ran into the River with her load and swam over he followed her and got on her and made her swim back agin it is a very raney Eavening we take up camp near Richland Creek they kill a beef Mr. Drake Bakes Bread without washing his hands we Keep Sentry this Night for fear of the indians. Wednesday 12th — this is a Raney morning But we pack up and go on we come to Richland Creek it is high we tote our packs over on a tree and swim our horses over and there we meet another Companey going Back 5 they tell such News abram and Drake is afraid to go aney farther there we camp this night. thursday 13th — this morning the weather seems to brake and Be 1 Evidently none of the party had ever penetrated so far to the westward. _ 2 In coming down from Virginia Calk did not hit on Boone’s new route until the day this extract was written. 3 Meaning the road Boone had just blazed for the Transylvania Company. 4 This letter was sent by Boone before the one already quoted. 6 Those who were returning to civilization were small parties made up of men alone. The movement of entire families in caravans did not begin until the autumn of the year. 145 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA fair Abram and Drake turn Back 1 we go on and git to loral River we come to a creek Before wheare we are able to unload and to take our packs over on a log this day we meet about 20 more turning Back we are obliged to toat our packs over loral river and swim our horses one hors ran in with his pack and lost it in the river and they got it agin. Sunday 16th — cloudy and warm we start early and go on about 2 miles down the river and then turn up a creek that we crost about 50 times some very bad foards with a great Deal of very good land on it in the Eavening we git over to the waters of Caintuck and go a little down the creek and there we camp keep sentel the fore part of the night it Rains very har all night. tuesday 18th — fair and cool and we go on about 10 oclock we meet 4 men from Boones camp that cairn to conduck us on we camp this night just on the Beginning of the good land near the Blue lick they kill 2 bofelos this Eavening. thursday 20th — this morning is clear and cool. We start early and git Down to caintuck to Boons foart about 12 o’clock where we stop they come out to meet us and welcome us in with a voley of guns. fryday 21st — warm this Day they begin laying off lots in the town preparing for people to go to work to make corn. Sunday 23rd — this morning the peopel meets and draws for chois of lots this is a very warm day. monday 24th — We all view our lots and some Dont like them about 12 oclock the combses come to town and Next morning they make them a bark canew and set off down the river to meet their Companey. Wednesday 26th — We Begin Building us a house and a plaise of Defense to Keep the indians off this day we begin to live without bread. Satterday 29th — We git our house kivered with Bark and move our things into it at Night and Begin housekeeping Eanock Smith Rob¬ ert Whitledge and myself. So ends the journal of William Calk. He and those others of whom he tells wrote chiefly in deeds, not lan¬ guage; with rifle and ax instead of pen and ink. By the light of camp-fires at night he traced a few words, but with his footsteps he traced the Path through the wilder¬ ness. To him more than to any other one man who made the journey over Boone’s Road are later generations in¬ debted for a picture of the conditions that accompanied the commencement of westward travel in America. Calk’s narrative is short and fragmentary, but it tells more 1 After all the trouble Abram had had with his “mair,” and had overcome, it seems a pity to find that he gave up before reaching the goal. 146 03 VO 3 3 CL CO rr ft rt n S' mi tr o 3 M • 3 CIQ 3 H ft 3 3 ft C/3 —' Ml ft ft >-l ft l-t 3 <5 ft 3 ft 3 3 CL ^ 3- “ » O- »-t a> S3 O Hi Hi & o 3 CL '-t ft 3 <"5 S' ft *3 3 O PT i 3* O '-! Ml *? 3 3 3 cr Cl ft 3 n 3 St 3 n rt am m CL 3 cr 3* ^ s: 3 < ►- • 3 S3 CO 3 Hi 3" Ml rt 3 P 3 3 - o cr < »-t ^ • *—»• 3 TO 1 CL • w o KH o S3 3 mr j' - - A NEW-HAMPSHIUE TAVERN, S OME yedrs ago, his Hozinante striding A gentleman was in New-IIampshire riding^BP Far to the north—He’d travelled many a league, One day; and now with hunger, thirst, fatigue, «• Almost overcome, with most rejoicing eyes A tavern sign he at a distance spies : Approaching, on the sign these words appear : ** For man & beast best entertainment here,” Dismounting for the hostler now he calls. But for the n ostler all in vain he balls, He opes the door : that sees with graces winning, The landlady and daughter Bets a spinning _ Humming away at most enormous rate. This on the little wheel, that on the great, ' * Where is the landlord r’— e He is gone away Clear down the lot with Joe, a mowing hay ’ Grass, madam—have you oats ?—-* No, none at all My husband sold the whole last fall To find the house in liquors*—Corn, ma’am pray P * The last half bushel went to mill to day’ * Then you have meal P—* Not any ; you know. Bets, All we’ve not baked has gone to pay our debts. Let down them bars; take out your bits, your horse "Will find as good feed,.sir, as ever worz, (was.) This done, the traveler to the house returned, ’And to allay his thirst impatient burned, ’ ‘1*11 thank you madam, for a glass of gin And water*—‘ Sir, there’s not a*drop within’ •Some brandy, then.’—• Sir, we have none at all; For here, for brandy people never call.’ ‘ A glass then of West India.’—‘ sir we’ve none,* * ‘ Well then New England/—All our rum is gone.’ 4 Have you some cider, or some beer that’s good V • Our cider’s out—we have not lately brewed.* * I’m very thirsty ; pray some water bring’— 4 Bets take the gourd, and fetch some from the spring. 4 * Beta went—returned—• Mother, th’ old sow, oh lud. Has made the water all as thick as mud. By Vail’wing in the spring.’—The traveler now De’nands ; ‘ What keep you but yourselves and sow ?* ' * Keep,* says the woman, feeling anger’s spqr • What do we keep ? why we— keep Tavern, &V ■j. : >v -} f l 57.—A poem written by a traveller describing accommodations found by him at a New Hampshire inn of less excellence. Published by A. Allen, of Hartford, in his “New England Almanack for 1821.” A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA merchants’ exchanges and chambers of commerce in America. Many of the early merchants’ exchanges, in fact, held their regular meetings in taverns, and in some instances the courts and legislatures did likewise. When¬ ever a mass meeting was to be held the public was directed to assemble in front of, or within, some prominent hos¬ telry. Legal notices and governmental proclamations were fastened to the fronts of inns, and political caucuses assembled in those establishments, 1 where the leaders of public opinion always took up their headquarters during a time of unrest. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Inde¬ pendence in a tavern 2 and discussed it there with his fellow revolutionists. The main feature of any early tavern was a large pub¬ lic assembly room containing chairs and tables and with an immense open fireplace on one side. Opening from this apartment was the dining-room, and beyond it, the kitchen. The guest rooms were usually above. The stock of liquors was kept in barrels, jugs and bottles in the pub¬ lic room, behind a partition or counter. For nearly a cen¬ tury and a half the tavern stables contained no provision for the accommodation of vehicles. Only travellers on horseback or on foot were expected, and many of these carried their own blankets on their backs. When a wav- •j farer came to an inn and found the beds all in use his serenity of mind was quite undisturbed. The landlord considered it to be his duty to give shelter to all who opened his door, and did so. After the normal capacity 1 During the political agitation that preceded the Revolution the "Green Dragon,” in Boston, was the headquarters of the Whig, or American party. There Hancock, the Adamses, Warren, Revere, Putnam and others gathered to discuss the troubles of the ■colonies. In the "Bunch of Grapes,” another Boston inn, the Ohio Company was organized by Rufus Putnam and his friends, and in that way the tavern played a part in the movement toward the West that eventually led to the permanent settlement of Ohio. Franklin and his cronies gathered nightly in the "Indian King” tavern of Philadel¬ phia, to discuss publ’c affairs. 3 The “Indian Queen,” in Philadelphia, where he was lodging at the time. 214 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 58.—The Raleigh Tavern. A southern inn of the best sort during the last half of the eighteenth century. of the tavern was exhausted any additional arrivals were informed of the fact and knew what to do without further comment. At bed time they simply spread their blankets on the floor of the public room, lay down with their feet toward the fire and rolled themselves up like a row of human cocoons. Often the assembly room was so crowded with the forms of weary men that a very late comer had to explore by candle-light and careful steps in order to find space for himself. In the morning the guests un¬ rolled, and arose full clad for another day upon the road. They made their ablutions, amid fearful splutterings, at the watering trough or a wooden tub outside, and passed the towel around with courtesy. Then came the breakfast ceremonial. The host marched to the front door, lifted a cow’s horn to his lips and sent forth the resounding blast that summoned all 215 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA hands to the table. Some landlords preferred a big bell rather than a horn, and filled the air with a clangor heard for a mile around. A meal at one of the early taverns was nearly always a bountiful repast, and usually ended, whether at breakfast, dinner or supper, with two or more kinds of pie. Everything was put on the big table at once, and everybody ate until he reluctantly made up his mind to stop. In those days a meal meant all a man wanted to eat. The price remained the same. A slice of bread was visible even when the edge of it was held toward the eye, the butter could be safely attributed to the cow, and a third cup of tea or glass of milk was as smilingly produced, if called for, as was the first. In short, the deplorable defi¬ ciency in varieties of knives and forks, and in different species of spoons — as measured by modern requirements — was made up by a plentitude of things that could be eaten instead of looked at. The tavern dinner-table of early days, when fully equipped for active service, was primarily designed for satisfying hunger rather than to tickle the eye of the gastronomical critic who would shud¬ der to behold a slice of ham lifted to its doom on a sausage knife. The fundamental idea of the diner was to convey the food from the table to his teeth; the precise method of its conveyance thither being a matter of subsidiary con¬ cern. In his main purpose he was successful, and if the methods by which bread and meat are transported to their final destination have also improved with the lapse of years, it is well to remember that those earlier generations were sturdy men who fearlessly met whatever emergency confronted them, whether the problem was the conquest of the wilderness or the impalement of a distant potato. Such were the essential features of the average early tavern of the frontier and its accommodations of bed and 216 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA board. City establishments were much more pretentious. 1 Of course there were all sorts of public houses. A few were poor establishments; many were excellent indeed. A French traveller 2 who had large opportunity to judge American inns of the late eighteenth century said of them, as a class: “You meet with neatness, dignity and decency; the chambers neat, the beds good, the sheets clean, supper passable; cyder, tea, punch and all for fourteen pence a head.” 3 John Adams was commenting on an inn of high quality when he wrote: “Oated and drank tea 4 at Pease's — a smart house and landlord truly; well dressed with his ruffles, etc., and upon inquiry I found he was the great man of the town, their representative as well as tavern keeper.” A careful comparison between early ordinaries and the later establishments which had just begun to lose their old influence and take on the character of modern hotels has been left in the writings of an observant Ameri¬ can scholar 5 who was familiar with national conditions throughout a long period. “The best old-fashioned New England inns,” he averred, “were superior to any of the modern ones. There was less bustle, less parade, less appearance of doing a great deal to gratify your wishes, than at the reputable modern inns; 6 but much more was actually done, and there was greater comfort and en¬ joyment. In a word, you found in these inns the pleasures of an excellent private house. If you were sick, you were nursed and befriended as in your own family. To finish 1 One of the greatest of the early taverns was the “Indian Queen” in Baltimore, which had no less than two hundred bed-chambers. Similarly large houses were to be found, by Revolutionary times, in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. 2 Brissot de Warville. 3 The price he names is too low to represent the average charge for equal enter¬ tainment. 4 Meaning that the horse “oated” and he drank tea. Pease was the Yankee who also carried on so many stage-coach lines. 6 Timothy Dwight. 6 Those of about 1825. 217 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the story, your bills were always equitable, calculated on what you ought to pay, and not upon the scheme of get¬ ting the most which extortion might think proper to demand.” One big basis of the small charges made by early taverns for the accommodations they offered was to be found in the prices of food during those times. Govern- 59.—A very large inn, with travellers arriving and departing. The vehicles are a two-horse private coach, a small two-horse stage-coach of ovai lines, and three examples of the one-horse chaise. mental regulation of commercial affairs—and even of retail trade and small transactions to which the ultimate consumer was a party—was a familiar feature of the period in some colonies, and no little care was taken that the people were not unduly charged for their food¬ stuffs. The business of supplying the public with those commodities commonly called necessities of life was not 218 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA then the complex and artificially mysterious process it has since become. Neither the products of the soil nor essential manufactured articles were passed through many hands by a commercial mechanism devised for the pur¬ pose, and at constantly increasing valuations, before reach¬ ing the individuals who had actual use for them. The amount of money needed to produce a unit quantity of any ordinary kind of food and place it before the con¬ sumer in the market-place was a matter of common noto¬ riety, or easily ascertainable if desired, and the legal prices of such commodities were based on that knowledge. Arti¬ cles of food and other things requiring systematic labor for their production were cheap because they normally passed directly from the producer to the consumer, with¬ out the intervention of those devious commercial devices that have been, in part, brought into being by later struc¬ tural changes in human society. As an example of the retail value of foodstuffs in the second half of the eighteenth century, the lawful prices of certain commodities in the New York City markets in the year 1763 may be cited. They were: 1 A hen turkey, two shillings and sixpence; a teal duck, sixpence; a quail, one and one-half penny; a wild goose, two shillings; a snipe, one penny; sea bass, two pence a pound; butter, ninepence per pound; lobsters, sixpence per pound; clams, ninepence a hundred; oysters, two shill¬ ings per bushel. These were mostly luxuries. The prices of domestic meats and ordinary vegetables and fruits were in no espe¬ cial need of regulation, for their values were too well known and trivial. Of some such things the consumer 1 Watson’s “Olden Time Researches and Remembrances of New York City.” Phila., 1830. Contained in the first edition of the “Annals of Philadelphia.” 219 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA could get all he required for whatever he wanted to pay. The vendor of them at times acted as if ashamed to take his customer’s money, and added an extra peck or so to a bushel of vegetables as an apology for making a commer¬ cial transaction out of it. Thus, if the guest at a tavern was protected by law from overcharge, so also was the tavern keeper himself safeguarded in his purchases of provender that his own efforts did not produce. The traveller in the South, in his search for food and shelter, encountered experiences radically different from those that came to him along the busier highways of the northern and central colonies. Very few taverns of any sort were to be found in southern regions until some time after the Revolution, and those that did exist were in Charleston, Richmond and two or three others of the in¬ frequent towns. The man who found it necessary to make any extensive journey in the South could never expect to obtain provision for his needs at a public house established for the purpose. Yet in spite of such an apparent obstacle to endurable travel, the pilgrim in that part of the coun¬ try found a reception even more cordial, and comforts often more elaborate, than those which greeted him in New England or the middle commonwealths. From earliest times the people of the South displayed a personal hospitality to strangers unusual in its sincerity and universality, which has continued without interrup¬ tion as a tradition and an existent reality. Massachusetts colony, as has been seen, had a law framed to make it difficult for a private person to entertain a traveller be¬ neath his roof. Virginia, on the contrary, declared by an act of government that unless a wanderer within her boundaries himself stipulated that he was to pay for his entertainment no charge should fall upon him, no matter 220 60.—An incident of pedestrian travel. Indicating the manner in which packs of food, blankets or other necessities were carried between taverns. Two of the men wear bootees, and the costumes of all indicate wealth. The reptile is exaggerated. A rattlesnake nine feet long was a monster. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA how long he remained, or where. There were almost no southern inns in the commercial sense, but every habita¬ tion, of whatsoever degree, was a sure refuge for the way¬ farer at any time of night or day. So it was from the first. An early traveller in the region drew this picture of the extent to which the people of the South made it their duty to entertain the sojourner among them: “The inhabitants,” he said, “are very courteous to travellers, who need no other recommendation than being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do but to inquire upon the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lives, and then he may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good-nature is so general among their people that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal servants to entertain all visitors with everything the plantation affords; and the poor planters who have but one bed will often sit up, or lie upon a form, or couch all night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself after his journey .” 1 The southern planters went even further than Berke¬ ley said, for in the era when there were no public houses in that part of the country, planters along the most fre¬ quented roads sometimes kept slaves beside the highway whose duty it was to invite travellers to stop for the night and receive, as guests, whatever entertainment they re¬ quired. The cabin dwellers of the South pursued the same policy, and few worse affronts could be given either to them or to the wealthier planters than to offer money in exchange for the hospitality they so freely extended. But one other phase of travel movement remains to be mentioned as a salient feature of the conditions that ex¬ isted until after the Revolution. It was the attention given to the Susquehanna River region of New York and Pennsylvania, and the first efforts made to reach and popu¬ late that part of the country. The struggle of the people of New England, New Jersey, eastern New York and 1 Berkeley’s “History of Virginia.” 222 . A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA lower Pennsylvania to penetrate to the valley of the Sus¬ quehanna and establish themselves there, during the forty years from 1735 onward, emphasizes the trivial impression that had been made on the northern wilderness up to that time and illustrates the diversity of transportation meth¬ ods which then prevailed. It has already been seen that the era was one in which desire for expansion and improve¬ ment first became apparent in any degree, and where¬ in, for the first time, striking contrasts in travel facilities were visible. Pedestrians and horsemen filled the roads between towns in more thickly settled regions; canoes and pole-boats were busy on the little coastal rivers of the North; long pack-trains wound through the Pennsylvania mountains; Conestoga wagons lumbered slowly across the country, and the feats of the newly established periodic Flying Machine made many believe that the millennium of locomotion was swiftly approaching. Progress was in¬ deed a visible reality, but it was almost altogether con¬ fined to a few important highways and the neighborhood of half a dozen important cities. If the traveller in any part of the country left the beaten track, even but for a few miles, he found himself amid that “most howling wilderness” which appalled the earliest immigrants and presented such formidable obstacles to any advance through it. Those primeval barriers to progress were the ones encountered by men who fought their way toward the Susquehanna during the very years that the stage wagon and first stage-coaches were coming into use but a short distance away. The importance of the Susquehanna River and valley as a travel route was recognized at an early time, 1 even 1 That is to say, the route was an important one to a people who had no means of transport but small boats and horses. 223 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA when the geography of the region was but vaguely known. Perhaps the first prominent reference to it as a possible highway for white men was that made by Cadwallader Colden, in 1737, when he said that “goods may be carried 1 from this lake [Lake Otsego, in New York] in battoes or flat-bottomed vessels through Pennsylvania to Maryland and Virginia and ... by either of these branches goods may be carried to the mountains, and I am told that the passage through the mountains to branches of the Mis¬ sissippi (which issue on the west side of these mountains 2 ) is neither long nor difficult, by which means inland navi¬ gation may be had to the Bay of Mexico.” The first general manifestation of public interest in the Susquehanna country became visible in New England about 1750, and was in part due to stories descriptive of the district brought back by missionaries who had pene¬ trated into the western forest to convert the Indians. 3 These tales were spread through Connecticut and Massa¬ chusetts by word of mouth and the newspapers. A few adventurous spirits soon organized the regular little travel caravans and set forth to grope through the woods and establish new homes in the far-off land, two hundred miles away, that was known to them only by hearsay. They put their women on horses, loaded other animals with bedding and household goods, tied the babies in maple-syrup troughs for safe keeping, picked up their rifles, whistled to the dogs, and started. Their way led them over the country to the Hudson River, which they crossed near the present town of Cats- kill. As the result of these first migrations a trail that 1 On the Susquehanna. 2 Colden, as well as ether public men, knew of the head waters of the Ohio and dimly saw their possible future utility as an aid to progress through the interior. 3 Elihu Spencer and John Sergeant were two of the missionaries whose narratives aided in producing this result. 224 THE DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS; GLASGOW: PUBLISHED BY RICHARD GRIFFIN & CO. MDCCCXXXVI. CHAHACTERISTIC SKETCHES OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. BY RECENT TRAVELLERS. 61.—Rough travellers carousing around the huge fireplace in the assembly room of a large tavern at night. The floor is made either of puncheons or slabs of flat stone. The liquor bar is shown. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA promptly developed into a well-marked tote-road, and afterward into a highway fit for vehicles, 1 soon led from the settled districts of New England to the Hudson. Once that stream was passed the journey through the forest 2 became a more difficult one. The route still to be traversed before the upper waters of the Susquehanna were reached was a hundred miles long in a westwardly direction, and at first there was no serviceable path to be followed. The ground was a jumble of obstacles through which a caravan had to pick its way with infinite labor, at the rate of a few miles a day. One man who went over the trail in 1753 3 left a record of his experiences in the wilderness west of the Hudson in which he said the road was “ob¬ structed by fallen trees, old logs, miry places, pointed rock and entangling roots. How bad the travelling is we cannot tell.” The male members of the caravans made beds of pine boughs at night for their wives and babies, and themselves rolled up in blankets on the ground, where they got such sleep as the panthers and wolvss permitted to them. On arriving at the Susquehanna the men of each pack-train built canoes in which to transport the goods, women and children of the party southward to a favorable location, and a few members led the tired horses overland along the banks of the river. When all had at last reunited and chosen a site for future homes they built log cabins and took up again the daily duties of their lives. The other way of reaching the headwaters of the Sus- 1 The road through Connecticut to the Hudson was made into a turnpike about the year 1800, and a flood of travel in Conestoga wagons and other vehicles then moved over it toward the new settlements in interior New York and northern Pennsylvania. Wagons, however, had reached the Hudson over the trail some time before it became a turnpike. A later reference will be made to the movement toward the Susquehanna as it developed after the Revolution. 2 In 1871 a traveller between the Hudson and the Susquehanna measured a birch tree 26 feet in circumference. 3 Gideon Hawley, who travelled from Massachusetts to the Susquehanna in that year.. 226 ' A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA quehanna was by means of big canoes, usually of the hol¬ low log variety, that were propelled up the river by means of poles. Many of the people who first travelled into northern Pennsvlvania and central New York from south- ern Pennsylvania and the Delaware Bay region in the second half of the eighteenth century made the trip in that manner. When laden with the members of his family and his worldly possessions, a man’s canoe often weighed 62.—McCann’s two-penny piece. A specimen of the metallic money issued by a few early American tavern keepers. Such pieces are among the uncom¬ mon examples of American coinage. Brass. Actual size. Revolutionary period. The punched hole, which corresponds to that made in some issues of early metallic stage-coach and railway tickets, suggests that tavern money was occasionally strung on wire, for convenience. See illustration No. 159. a ton. In seasons of low water all the men and women got out, waded in the stream and pushed their craft along until another navigable stretch of the river was reached. Thus they journeyed, never at the rate of more than twenty-five miles a day and usually at about half that speed, until they gained their destination. Two or three weeks of hard work were required, under favorable condi¬ tions, to reach the interior of New York from either New England or the mouth of the Susquehanna. Such were the methods by which the first travel of white people into upper Pennsylvania and central and southern New York was undertaken. The men who did such extraordinary things looked upon their experiences 227 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA in a matter-of-fact way because they had no conception of other devices for human locomotion. They gave all their ingenuity to the problem of transporting themselves from place to place, and thought they succeeded admirably well. According to their notion the obvious troubles and discomforts were altogether due to natural conditions that would never be greatly different, and were in no degree due to the crudity of their own appliances, which, in their opinion, were nearly as good as could be fashioned. All progress thus far made in land travel had been the result of patient effort, persistence and adaptability along one clearly defined but narrow line of development. No other element had entered into the attempted solution of the problem. There was manifest, as indicated, a cer¬ tain quality of impatience that had brought about greater speed on highways, and which, when fully awakened, was to alter the face of the world and the affairs of humanitv, but it was not an impatience born of knowledge that better things exist yet are unavailable for immediate use. Every small forward step in advance for a century and a half in using land and water vehicles — boats had hardly altered at all — had been due, either directly or indirectly, to physical labor either by man or beast, or both. Of those near impending miracles born of the brain and not of the hands, without which the task of continental conquest might not have been accomplished in a thousand years, there was no trace; no hint. The time was but lately passed when an exhibition of such things would have re¬ sulted in the execution of their originator as the master of infernal powers whose possession made him a danger to his fellow men. Then came the years of the Revolution as a climax to the incessant economic struggle, social disor¬ der, political unrest and turmoil of warfare that had pre- 228 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA vailed during all the history of the new civilization which was fighting for dominance on the edge of the conti¬ nent. The close of the Revolution and the attainment of independence found the people of the new-born states in a curious condition of mind. In their consideration of, and attention to, the small affairs of their daily lives they behaved in a normal way, for the thought and action nec- 1 i? yqs* from A] ]««,>- 63.—Sample of the paper money issued by tavern keepers for the convenience of travellers and the neighboring population. Small silver was often scarce, and tavern money, in sums under one dollar, took its place. If the repu¬ tation of the inn-keeper was good, then the money was good. The paper was frequently printed from engraved plates, as in this case, as a precau¬ tion against counterfeiting. essary to the carrying on of such matters was largely auto¬ matic. At least it did not require any departure from fa¬ miliar precedent, any violent effort to adopt new customs and admit that former methods, as well as former years, were dead. But apart from their daily routine the attention of the population was given to a consideration of political af¬ fairs and to the utterance, by voice or pen, of all the thoughts upon those subjects that germinated within their 229 » A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA minds. There was a cyclone of discussion, a tumult of debate that was hushed only by the ocean on one side and the wilderness on the other. Let it be said, however, that in this strange period — as in all others of like nature in history — there were a few men whose thoughts were largely given to questions of material development and who tried hard, although in vain, to attract the attention of their brethren. These conditions were not surprising when considered in connection with what had preceded them. They were, rather, natural and inevitable, and now require to be mentioned because of a phenomenon in which they were soon to result. For many years all that was strongest in the intellect of the colonies had been concentrated, with an intensity hard to exaggerate, on political affairs. For an equal time the people had lived a national life in which warfare and politics had been almost the only elements. The leaders of public thought and action had ceaselessly appealed to the country in utterances dealing with those things, and the mass of the people had done nothing but listen to the appeals, argue about them and fight in re¬ sponse to them. And at last the end of the long tumult had come; the abstract political condition so long desired and struggled for had been gained. But the country could not at once put aside all memory of the period just ended, and turn with calm and unclouded thought to the more prosaic but equally important questions of domestic affairs and conti¬ nental progress. Indeed, it is probable that such things were even further from the public mind immediately after the Revolution than before or during the struggle, since nations — like individuals — have youth, strength and senility, and their inhabitants collectively manifest in 230 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA those periods many of the characteristics of the individual man. It was a very young, though vigorous and boister¬ ous nation that had been born of the Revolution. It was old enough to realize its own existence, and was much interested in itself and its surroundings, but did not yet feel equal to the task of walking very far in any one direc¬ tion. The colonies, though they had won their freedom, did not yet know what to do with it. Absorbed in a con¬ templation of past perils from which they had so recently emerged, the freemen suddenly found that independence, in itself, was not a complete solution of the problem cre¬ ated by their ambition. No sooner was the fighting ended than the chief figures of the land fell into another vio¬ lent discussion over the next step to be taken, and the pop¬ ulace forthwith took sides and added to the clamor. Dur¬ ing the years from 1783 to 1789 the country was a contin¬ uous political caucus, and no broad subject that did not in some way relate to state rights, Federal jurisdiction, term of office, taxation, the franchise, or such things, had much chance of winning the public ear. Even the significance that lay in the extension of the national territory to the Mississippi River failed to receive general attention. There was no way to get there. The national horizon, in the eyes of the mass of the people, still remained about two hundred miles wide from east to west. CHAPTER XIV JOHN FITCH CONCEIVES THE PLAN OF APPLYING STEAM TO THE PURPOSES OF TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION — HIS EARLY METHODS AND MODELS—THE IDEA PLACED BEFORE MANY LEGISLATURES AND PUBLIC MEN — NO ONE GRASPS ITS VALUE — HE SECURES RECOGNITION AND MONOPOLISTIC PRIVILEGES — JEERS GREET THE FIRST BOAT MOVED BY STEAM IN AMERICA — PER¬ SISTENCE OF THE INVENTOR I T was amid these conditions, in the year 1785, that a man named John Fitch, born in Connecticut but then living in Philadelphia, came forward with a plan for revolutionizing the social and business affairs of mankind by applying steam to the purposes of travel and transpor¬ tation. He proposed to run boats on the Delaware River by means of steam power, and proceeded to do it, while the baby-among-nations looked on. The complete record of Fitch’s life and work is avail¬ able, 1 and it is therefore only necessary, in these pages, to preface the narrative of his invention of the steamboat in America by saying that he was a gunsmith during the 1 Whittelsey’s “Sketch of the Life of John Fitch”: Spark's “Amer. Biog.," Vol. VI. Westcott’s “Life of John Fitch”: Howe’s “Historical Collections of Connecticut”: “Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications,” Vol. VIII. Lloyd’s “Steamboat Directory”: O’Callahan’s “Documentary History of New York”: Preble’s “History of Steam Navigation”: Thornton’s “Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats”: Watson’s “Annals of Philadelphia”: U. S. Patent Office Report for 1850, Part I. “New York Magazine,” 1790; etc., etc., etc. 232 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Revolution, a worker in metal, a maker and repairer of clocks and watches, and an explorer, map maker, surveyor and captive of the Indians in the western wilderness. Be¬ cause of unhappy domestic relations he had left his family some sixteen years before the date mentioned, after long consideration of the consequences of that step on himself and his reputation. And in later years, when putting into words the manuscript record of his under¬ takings that was entrusted to the Philadelphia Library, to be opened thirty years after its deposit in that institu¬ tion, he said: “I know of nothing so perplexing and vexa¬ tious to a man of feelings as a turbulant Wife and Steam¬ boat building. I experienced the former, and quit in season, and had I been in my right sences, I should un¬ doubtedly have treated the latter in the same manner.” Fitch’s scanty education, of which proof is seen in the passage quoted, will be understood when it is said that his father, a close-fisted man, compelled him to quit his inter¬ mittent schooling at the age of ten despite the boy’s protest. After that calamity he worked for himself dur¬ ing the hours in which his parent did not demand his services, raised a crop of potatoes which he sold for ten shillings, and bought a geography. He would have real¬ ized more from his labor had not his father demanded of him a quantity of the produce equal to that originally given to him to plant. The incident is an illustration of the qualities which later impelled the man to persevere, in the face of obstacles and derision, until he had turned his vision of a steamboat into a reality. The idea of a steamboat came to him in the spring of 1785, and by August his first rough model was completed. On the 20th of that month, Doctor Ewing, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a letter to William 233 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Houston, a former member of Congress, in which he said: “I have examined Mr. Fitch’s machine for rowing a boat. . . . It is certain that the extensive force of water, when converted into steam, is equal to any obstruction that can be laid in its way . . . and the application of this force to turn a wheel in the water, so as to answer the purpose of oars, seems easy and natural by the machine which he pro¬ poses, and of which he has shown me a rough model. . .” With this as a basis Fitch started for New York City in an effort to interest Congress in his invention. He stopped on the way at Trenton, where Houston wrote a similar letter, and at Princeton, where Provost Smith of Princeton Col¬ lege gave him a third. Reaching the national capital, the inventor wrote a letter to Congress which read as follows: “August 29, 1785. “Sir: “The subscriber begs leave to lay at the feet of Congress, an attempt he has made to facilitate the internal Navigation of the United States, adapted especially to the Waters of the Mississippi. The machine he has invented for the purpose, has been examined by several Gentlemen of Learning and Ingenuity, who have given it their approbation. Being thus encouraged, he is desirous to solicit the attention of Congress, to a rough model of it now with him, that, after examination into the principles upon which it operates, they may be enabled to judge whether it deserves encouragement. And he, as in duty bound, shall ever pray. “John Fitch. “H is Excellency, The President of Congress.” This letter was referred to a committee of three mem¬ bers, who made no report as far as the records show. The minutes of Congress, at that time, contained no reference to any but matters considered to be of importance. Fitch’s invention did not fall within that category. He returned to Pennsylvania filled with anger at the treatment he had received, and thereafter referred to the committee of Con¬ gress as “ignorant boys.” But before departing from New 234 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA York he had approached the Spanish Minister with his boat. The diplomat was much interested, and desired that the invention should be the exclusive property of his master, the King of Spain. To this Fitch would not consent. Fitch’s first model is described by Provost Ewing of the University of Pennsylvania as having a wheel that turned in the water. The best description of it is hy John Fitch’s model of Sept., 1785, with endless chain and floats and paddle- boards, in possession of the American Philosophical Society. ;:3 1 l i ,/! , j 64.—John Fitch conceives the idea that steam might be applied to the purposes of transportation, and invents a steamboat. His first steam-propelled craft, in 1785, was a skiff moved by little paddles (shown in black in the illus¬ tration) which were attached to an endless chain. The illustrations to No. 72, inclusive, also relate to Fitch’s work. Daniel Longstreth, 1 who says: “It was in this log shop [owned by Cobe Scout, a wheelwright of Bucks county, Pa.] that Fitch made his model steamboat, with paddle- wheels as they are now used. The model was tried on a small stream on Joseph Longstreth’s meadow, about half a mile from Davisville, in Southampton township, and it realized every expectation. The machinery was made of brass, with the exception of the paddle-wheels, which were made of wood by Nathaniel B. Boileau, 2 whilst on a visit during vacation from Princeton College.” 1 The “D. L.” of Watson’s “Annals.” Daniel Longstreth’s father was an associate of Fitch while the inventor lived in Pennsylvania. 2 Afterward Secretary of State of Pennsylvania. 235 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Other accounts relating to Fitch’s preliminary ideas are given by Doctor William Thornton, a member of Fitch’s company, by Henry Voigt, also a member of the company and the inventor’s principal assistant, and by Oliver Evans, an early engineer of America who him¬ self built and ran a steamboat at Philadelphia in 1804. Probably because the wheels were too heavy for such a small model and weak engine they were almost at once discarded. On this point Whittlesey says: “The buckets of the wheels were found to labor too much in the water, entering, as they did, at a considerable angle, and depart¬ ing at the same. They lost power by striking at the surface and afterwards lifting themselves out of water. This led to the substitution of oars or paddles.” For these reasons, in all probability, Fitch made the first of three successive alterations in the method by which his boat was to be propelled. On September 27, 1785, he attended the meeting of the American Philosophical So¬ ciety at Philadelphia, and laid before that organization an amended drawing and model of his invention. The rec¬ ords of the Society on the subject read: “Tuesday, September 27, 1785. “The model, with a Drawing and Description, of a Machine for working a Boat against the stream by means of a steam-engine, was laid before the Society by Mr. John Fitch.” “December 2nd, 1785. “A copy of the Drawing and Description of a machine for rowing a boat against the current, which sometime ago was laid before the Society by Mr. John Fitch, he this evening presented to them.” The model was preserved by the Society. By 1857, when Westcott investigated the subject and wrote his life of the inventor, all the drawings and descriptions were missing. By reference to the illustration of Fitch’s second 236 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA model it will be seen that he had substituted, in place of paddle-wheels, a series of upright paddles attached to end¬ less chains, which passed over a roller toward the bow of the boat, entered the water, propelled the craft, and emerged to repeat the circuit. A section of the endless chain of paddles is also reproduced. Fitch had worked himself into a mental frenzy. He believed he was on the right track, and was certain he could propel a boat by steam. No other thought pos¬ sessed him. His days were given to alternate pleadings and arguments, or else to fits of rage, melancholy or exas¬ peration because he was penniless and could not go ahead without help from others. But since aid was plainly nec¬ essary he set out to get it, armed with a determination to compel attention and secure the necessary money from some source either public or private. He began, there¬ fore, a methodic visitation of legislatures and persons in high place that was as apparently endless as his system of paddles. His first effort was an attempt to enlist the interest of Benjamin Franklin, to whom he wrote a letter on October 12th. In urging the necessity of steamboats to Franklin he said: “It is a matter in his [Fitch’s] opinion of the first Magnitude not only to the United States, but to every Maratime power in the World, as he is full in the belief that it will answer for sea Voiages, as well as for inland Navigation, in particular for Packets where there should be a great number of Pasengers.” This letter Westcott found in possession of the American Philosoph¬ ical Society of Philadelphia. The next victim of the inventor’s importunities was ex-Governor Thomas Johnson, of Maryland, who got rid of him by suggesting that he go to see General Washing¬ ton. So Fitch posted forthwith to Mount Vernon, where 237 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 65.—Detail of the propulsion method of Fitch’s first boat. The paddles were out of water as they moved forward, and after passing the front roller they entered the water and proceeded toward the stern, thus forcing the boat ahead. the General, he says, received him with courtesy and lis¬ tened to his plans. That was the usual thing. Everybody always received him, and everybody listened, or appeared to. His next stopping place was Richmond, in Virginia, where the legislature was in session. Legislatures at that time were Fitch’s especial prey, and his memorial to the Virginia Assembly was presented by no less a person than James Madison. A committee was duly appointed — fa¬ miliar procedure to the poverty-stricken man who was begging for the opportunity of enriching the world be¬ yond computation — and its members spoke very favor¬ ably to the petitioner. But they made no report. He also saw Patrick Henry, then governor of the state, who said the plan was novel and interesting. Returning to Fredericktown he again went to ex- Governor Johnson, who hastily subscribed to Fitch’s map of the Northwest Territory as a means of being rid of him, and suggested that the legislature of Maryland was in session at Annapolis. So indeed it was, but Fitch was also aware that the Pennsylvania Assembly had gathered again in Philadelphia, and he went there first, presenting his usual petition. It was referred to a committee who made 238 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA a flattering oral report, but no action was taken. Final¬ ly, at Annapolis, and for the first time, Fitch’s plan re¬ ceived formal notice. The Maryland legislature consid¬ ered it for three days and then refused to endorse the in¬ vention. The committee said that although it was desira¬ ble “for liberal and enlightened Legislators to encourage useful arts,” yet the state and condition of the state’s finances did not permit such action in that instance. His next stopping place on the trip was at Dover, in Delaware. Fitch talked with the members of the legislature and doubtless finding the effort useless did not present his plan, but departed for Philadelphia. In February of 1786 he went to Trenton. On the defeat of his bill by the New Jersey legislature he returned to his home. Fitch had then appealed to all the powerful men with¬ in his reach, to five states, and to the General Congress, without effect. Not one mind grasped the value of the idea. So he decided to begin all over again, and went once more to Doctor Franklin. That eminent man spoke in a calm and complimentary vein, declined to endorse the steamboat, and then, taking Fitch into another room, pri¬ vately offered to give him several dollars in cash. The incensed inventor refused the money except as a subscrip¬ tion toward the building of the boat and withdrew in anger from the abode of philosophy. Doubtless Benjamin Franklin had never before made such a mistake in his diagnosis of a fellow man, but doubt¬ less, also, the same error would have been made by others as profound as he, if such there were. The tall, gaunt, shabby, excitable, almost incoherent enthusiast, pouring out words in a frantic effort to make others see the future as he saw it, already presented to many minds the spec¬ tacle of a madman babbling over a phantasy. 239 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA But the turning-point was almost at hand. After still another appeal to the Assembly of Pennsylvania which he left to its usual fate, he rushed away again to Trenton where he petitioned the New Jersey legislature for a spe¬ cial law giving to him the exclusive right to navigate the waters of that state by steam power. He had altered his tactics, and instead of trying to get money first he begged for legal privileges, hoping the necessary cash would be easier to secure if his claim as an inventor was recognized. This application was successful. On March 18, 1786, New Jersey granted to Fitch “The sole and exclusive right of constructing, making, using and employing, or navi¬ gating, all and every species or kinds of boats, or water craft, which might be urged or impelled by the force of fire or steam, in all the creeks, rivers, etc., within the terri¬ tory or jurisdiction of this state.” The right so given was to exist for fourteen years. Whatever historical interest New Jersey’s action of 1786 may have as a landmark in the evolution of travel facilities is overshadowed by its greater importance in another respect. The passage of Fitch’s bill was the first step on a pathway of error along which the country stum¬ bled for more than half a century, and some effects of the mistake are still visible throughout the whole modern system of American transportation. New Jersey’s grant was a declaration of the principle that individuals or indi¬ vidual companies might hold exclusive privileges for the transporting of passengers and freight by certain methods within the limits of any state. Imitated, as it was, by other commonwealths, the idea thus established split the country into small fragments on the one feature of na¬ tional development which, above all others, called for a policy continental in its scope. 240 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA The effect of the monopolistic privilege on Fitch’s plans was highly favorable. Within five weeks he had organized a little company of nearly twenty men, and of the forty equal shares he was to have one-half for his in¬ vention and services. The others paid about twenty dol¬ lars each, and something over three hundred dollars was on hand with which to build the first American steamboat. At this time — April of 1786 — there were but three steam-engines in America. All were built on the old atmospheric plan, and the newest of them, that at the Schuyler mine, near Passaic, New Jersey, had been brought from England thirty years before. The other two were in New England, and still older. No one in the country had ever made anything like the engine that Fitch called for, nor was any man known to possess the skill necessary to do it. In the face of such conditions he started to create, out of nothing more tangible than the ideas of his brain, a vehicle that should navigate the water by means of power contained within its own fabric. The element of human invention had at last been applied to the problem of transportation. While concerned over the proper construction of his engine Fitch fell in with an ingenious Philadelphia watchmaker named Henry Voight, and enlisted his serv¬ ices in the work. Together they built a small skiff and an engine with a three-inch cylinder, and about July 20, 1786, for the first time operated a steamboat on American waters. The miniature machinery and chain of paddles worked but poorly, and a little group who watched the boat from the shore jeered the two men and the wonder they had performed. Some local notoriety had attended the formation of the company and plan of the inventor, but all public comment was by word of mouth, accom- 241 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA panied by winks and jests. The newspapers made no men¬ tion of the matter. It was a joke, ill-fitted to the serious times and to those matters of consequence that engrossed popular attention. A few days after this experiment Fitch conceived the idea of propelling the boat by a series of twelve upright 66.—Fitch’s second boat. With his little experimental engine and upright oars it was operated on the Delaware River, at Philadelphia, in 1786. The contemporary engraving here reproduced is that printed in the Columbian Magazine for December, 1786. By an oversight the engraver of 1786 omitted to show the smoke-pipe. paddles, like oars, arranged six on each side and operated by a system of cranks. The device was accordingly built and fitted to the skiff, and was found to move the craft with increased speed and power. It was nevertheless seen that additional money was needed for larger machinery and a bigger boat, in order to carry on a test under condi¬ tions more nearly approaching the practical commercial vehicle toward which the inventor was aiming. 242 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Neither during his earlier efforts nor at any time did Fitch falter in his certainty that he had hit upon a means of transportation which would alter the affairs of man¬ kind, or that he would succeed in producing, in concrete form, the thing his brain had already constructed. It was amid these days that he wrote a letter to Stacy Potts, a member of the company, in which he said: “My expecta¬ tions are daily increasing as to the success of our undertak¬ ing, and dout not but it will be a matter of the first magni¬ tude to the World.” 1 Two other letters written by the inventor at the same time show an identical frame of mind. One was a petition to the Pennsylvania Assembly asking for a loan of £150, 2 in which he spoke of steam transporta¬ tion as “a plan that would enrich America at least 3 times as much as all that country N.W. [northwest] of the Ohio, as it would make that country four times as valuable, be¬ side the inconceivable advantages to the settled portion of the continent.” In the same communication he defined a characteristic of the people by saying, “There is such a strange infatuation in mankind that it seems they would rather lay out their money in Beloons 3 and Fireworks, and be a pest to Society than to lay it out in something that would be of use to themselves and Country.” The legis¬ lature refused to make the requested loan. The other letter was a similar request addressed to General Thomas Mifflin, of Pennsylvania, in which Fitch declared: “I am of opinion, that a vessel may be carried six, seven or eight miles per hour, by the force of steam, and the larger the vessel, the better it will answer, and am strongly inclined 1 This letter, quoted by Westcott in his biography of Fitch, has long been lost. It was recently rediscovered by Emil Sauer, the antiquary, and presented to the New York His¬ torical Society by S. V. Hoffman, Esq., the President of that Institution, together with five other important Fitch documents found with it. 2 It was the custom at that time for state legislatures to advance money to inventors for the prosecution of enterprises useful to society. The Pennsylvania Assembly, a few weeks before, had loaned another man £300 for the manufacture of bar iron. 3 Balloons had lately been invented, and had been shown in America for the first time. 243 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA to believe that it will answer for sea Voiages as well as for inland Navigation. . . . Was it a thing of trifling con¬ sequence to my Country, I would not persue it with such assiduity.” All Fitch’s efforts to obtain enough money in 1786 to enable him to continue the work were fruitless. In that year he deposited his plans and drawings with the Amer¬ ican Philosophical Society, in Philadelphia, but like so much other material evidence of his invention, those things disappeared. When Westcott sought for them 1 they were not to be found. The models and drawings of Fitch’s early boats were destroyed by the burning of the United States Patent Office in 1836. One contemporary evidence of what was done in 1786 remains. It is the pic¬ ture of his second boat, engraved on copper and published in the Columbian Magazine for December of that year, 2 together with a brief reference to the mechanism then used which was soon afterward printed in the same peri¬ odical. The illustration in this work is photographed from the original printed in 1786. A part of the contem¬ porary description of the mechanism of the second boat said: “The piston is to move about three feet, and each vibration of the piston turns the axle tree about two-thirds round. They propose to make the piston to strike thirty strokes in a minute; which will give the axle-tree about forty revolutions. Each revolution of the axle-tree moves twelve oars five and a half feet. As six oars come out of the water six more enter the water; which makes a stroke of about eleven feet each revolution. The oars work perpendicularly, and make a stroke similar to the paddle of a canoe . . . and both the action and reaction of the piston operate to turn the axle-tree the same way.” 3 1 About 1856. 2 Through some odd oversight the engraver showed no smoke-stack. 3 The thing that prevented early engineers up to about 1780 from developing the steam-engine, was the difficulty of converting the back-and-fourth motion of the piston into a rotary motion by means of a wheel moved by the piston. The mechanical princip'e thus sought had been in use for centuries on domestic spinning wheels, but no one thought of applying it to steam-engines until Pickard, in 1780, devised the crank attachment by which the dead point of the wheel was passed and a complete revolution obtained. 244 67 . —Early literature relating to travel in America. Title page of Rumsey’s pamphlet claiming precedence over Fitch as a steamboat inventor. Second edition of the first American book on steamboats. Printed in 1788. A A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Fitch was reduced to temporary inactivity through lack of money. Some members of his company had origi¬ nally subscribed because of friendship for the inventor with no hope of return, while others, over-enthusiastic, had expected large and immediate results from their in¬ vestments. Both sorts were disinclined to make further contributions, and in extremity Fitch turned again to the various legislatures in an effort to secure recognition of his rights as an inventor, and privileges in the use of the steamboat. His applications to some of those bodies were fought by various other men who had suggested improve¬ ments in the use of steam as applied to existing contri¬ vances, but Fitch met such opposition boldly. In his state¬ ment to the Pennsylvania Assembly he said, among other things: “I never pretended to be the first inventor of the steam engine, nor ever did Petition for an Exclusive right for them. I have never asked it in any other way than where it has never been applied, and I presume the World cannot produce a steam engine floating on the water. Neither do I conceive that all the Improvements that are yet to be made on :steam are to be done on the water . “I here produce seven different plans of applying the force of steam to a boat, and could produce four different models, if necessary . . . “It is the force and power that I contend for. As to the thought of applying that force to vessels I claim priority, and not the mode of application. “It is an undoubted fact that I am the first inventor of the steam¬ boat 1 ; . . . I have set myself up as a mark of derision, and have suffered every insult that the contempt which the populace have for projectors could inflict. “The propelling of a boat with steam is as new as the rowing of a boat with angels, and I claim the first thought and invention of it.” Opposition collapsed before words like that, and the lawmakers recognized the inventor’s claim. The state of Delaware, on February 3, 1787, gave to Fitch the exclu- 1 He was the first in America, but not in the world. His work and devices show that tie did not know of earlier similar inventions mentioned in a later chapter. 246 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA sive right to navigate all its waters by boats propelled in any way by steam for a period of fourteen years. New York passed a similar act on March 19 of the same year; Pennsylvania gave him identical privileges on March 28, and Virginia took like action on November 7. Each com¬ monwealth bestowed on him a monopoly of steam naviga¬ tion within its limits for a period of years, as New Jersey had previously done; but two of the states also took certain action that was, in the future, to have far reaching and long continued effect on the history of steam transportation in America. Virginia included in her law a proviso that Fitch must have “boats” — obviously meaning more than one — in operation on the waters of the state within a period of three years, and New York ordered that if any other man usurped the rights granted, such interloper was to forfeit £100 to Fitch and suffer the confiscation of his boat and engine by the original inventor. The stipulation made by Virginia was thought to be of especial value to the company, for as that state had long claimed sovereignty over much of the territory extending to the Mississippi River, a compliance with it meant, in the estimation of the company, that Fitch and his associates would enjoy a monopoly of steam transportation on the Ohio, upper Mississippi and other interior streams. The action of Delaware and the other states elated the company and stirred it to renewed activity. 1 Success and wealth seemed assured. More money was subscribed, and Fitch and his assistant again began work in the produc¬ tion of a larger boat and an engine with a twelve-inch cylinder. Again they were balked in their efforts to pro¬ duce a smooth-working mechanism. The task was a hard 1 A new agreement was drawn up on February 9, 1787, which Westcott found in the American Philosophical Society archives when preparing his biography. 247 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA one. They were hampered by a lack of knowledge of the relationships and proportions which cylinder, con¬ denser, boiler, pump and other parts of a steam-engine should bear to one another. They were building out of nothing, and could learn only by experience and repeated failure. No sooner did they have one part of the con¬ trivance perfect than something else failed. In May of 1787 the whole engine was taken down and rebuilt at heavy cost, and once more the company became so dis¬ couraged that some of its members abandoned the enter¬ prise altogether. But Fitch remained stubborn in his resolution to go on, wrote a long address to the public in which he elaborately reviewed his invention, reaffirmed his certainty in its value, pointed out its advantages in opening the country to white settlement, and used the words: “The Grand and Principle object must be on the Atlantick; which would soon overspread the wild forests of America with people, and make us the most oppulent Empire on Earth. . . . Pardon me, generous public, for suggesting ideas that cannot be dijested at this day.” CHAPTER XV FITCH'S SECOND BOAT — CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS OF IT — THE THIRD VESSEL— FIRST REGULARLY OPERATED STEAMBOAT IN THE WORLD — IT IS RUN ON THE DELAWARE FOR SEVERAL MONTHS — MORE CONTEM- ? V * .1 PORARY STATEMENTS — DISASTER — THE INVENTOR IS CALLED A MADMAN — PERSISTS “FOR THE BENEFIT OF OUR EMPIRE”— GOES TO FRANCE AND LEAVES HIS PLANS THERE — RETIRES TO THE KENTUCKY WILDER¬ NESS AND MAKES A STRANGE WHEELED ENGINE — DESPAIR — DEATH F ITCH’S persistence once more had its way. His associates found additional funds, the second boat was completed, and on August 22, 1787, it was operated under its own power on the Delaware River in the presence of many people, including most of the mem¬ bers of the Constitutional Convention then sitting in Phila¬ delphia. Still there was no general recognition of one of the most important events that had taken place since Columbus discovered the western world. The few cur¬ rent references to Fitch’s work are short, and lacking in comprehension of the effect the invention was destined to have on man’s progress. He himself seems to have been the only individual rightly to measure what he was doing. One of the contemporary mentions of the test of August 22nd occurs in a day-book kept by the Reverend Ezra 249 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Stiles, of New Haven, who under date of August 27 made in his diary the following entry: “Judge Ellsworth, a member of the Federal Convention, just re¬ turned from Philadelphia, visited me, and tells me the Convention will not rise under three weeks. He there saw a Steam-engine for rowing boats against the stream, invented by Mr. Fitch, of Windsor, in Con¬ necticut. He was on board the boat, and saw the experiment succeed.” Another mention of the boat made at about the same time was contained in a written statement by David Rit- tenhouse, an early American scientist, who said under date of December 12, 1787: “These may certify that the subscriber has frequently seen Mr. Fitch’s steamboat, which with great labour and perseverance he has at length compleated, and has likewise been on board when the boat was worked against both wind and tide, with a very considerable degree of velocity by the force of steam only. Mr. Fitch’s merit in constructing a good steam engine, and applying it to so useful a purpose, will no doubt meet with the encouragement he so justly deserves from the generousity of his countrymen; especially those who wish to promote every improve¬ ment of the useful arts in America.” 1 At about this time the inventor became involved in a controversy with James Rumsey, of Virginia, who had previously invented a boat in which the setting poles whereby it was propelled were to be operated through a system of mechanical cranks operated by wheels and hand power. Rumsey apparently found that such a device was not of value for he soon turned to the use of steam, and at first devised a boat based somewhat on a previous idea of Doctor Franklin, who had suggested that a forward movement might be obtained by forcibly ejecting a stream of water from the stern of the craft. Rumsey found many supporters among prominent men, 2 and an association 1 Westcott’s “Life of John Fitch.” 2 hitch was an anti-Federalist, and his political, social and religious beliefs brought upon him the dislike of many who held contrary views. It was a time wherein personal idiosyncrasies were peculiarly potent in fixing the estimate in which a man was held by his fellow citizens. Men were often opposed in some projects because their opinions on irrelevant matters were not endorsed. Fitch encountered such opposition. 250 68.—A later picture of Fitch’s third boat. No contemporary illustration is known. First steamboat and first steam vehicle of any sort employed in the business of transportation. It made a trial trip of 20 miles in 1788, and in 1790 ran moie than 1,000 miles on the Delaware River in accordance with advertisements printed in the Philadelphia newspapers. The date on the reproduced engraving is an error. r f ♦"* rja f? "p Oq CD p CD p O *1 ,_ o p tr ^ m p P C I hJ (T) g “ O- p 2 ch 2- CD P ** s p cr 1 P i_4 c-t- P o * p p- to B § 8 ^ >"-* • 35 t» *S Hr- P P <*t- P CD £u ^ > p2 HJ ® ^ o ts aq co' ® O P ■-■—< p CO oo (as > td c > fcj <5 W a a >• > W CO S3 W -i & » <"l rV a Mw!H A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA called the Rumseyian Society was organized to further his claims as the inventor of the steamboat. The Rumseyian Society, at a little later date, attempted before various state legislatures to obtain the repeal of laws favorable to Fitch, but without effect. In order to protect the interests of himself and his company Fitch was compelled to collect evidence concern¬ ing the claims of Rumsey, and to take part in a war of pamphlets in defense of his work. 1 This consumed some time, and in addition the inventor went to New York, where Congress was in session, to present a memorial to that body. The petition 2 said among other things: “Have- ing overcome every difficulty that ocationed doubts to arise, and having done what was never done before, (The world has been worrying against the stream this six thou¬ sand years) but we have exhibited to the World a Vessel going against strong winds and Tides, without sails, or men to labour; the Vessel carrying the Engine, the En¬ gine propelling the Vessel, and all moveing together against the Currents.” The report of the committee of Congress on the petition was favorable, but no action by the whole body was taken. After his return to Philadelphia Fitch resumed work on the engine and the company bought a large boat in 1 Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania had passed acts in 1784 and 1785 giving Rumsey rights in his pole boat, and the action of the same states, at a later date, in recognizing Fitch as the inventor of a method of propelling boats by steam power indicate there was no conflict in the systems of propulsion devised by the two men. Had there been such duplication Fitch could not have received the rights granted to him. There being no central patent office, the several states settled such questions of priority and privilege. The original pamphlets of Rumsey and Fitch, published in 1788, are now very rare, but their text is reprinted in O’Callaghan’s “Documentary History of New York. An analysis of the statements they contain, together with a chronology of the dispute, are also to be found in Westcott’s “Life.” A study of them will be of value to those inter¬ ested in the subject. Rumsey succeeded in moving a boat by steam at the rate of about three miles an hour in December of 1787, and in 1788 he went to England, where he afterward died. His English associates built a boat that was operated by steam on the Thames in 1793, but was abandoned. Woodcroft, in his “History of Steam Navigation, refers to Rumsey’s work in England. 2 The complete text is given by Westcott. 252 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA which it was to be installed. This craft, destined to be the first steam vehicle of any sort in the world to make regularly scheduled and advertised trips for the carriage of passengers, was forty-five feet long and twelve feet wide. The company had desired to obtain a hull about sixty feet in length by eight feet beam, rightly believing such a model would obtain greater speed, but was un¬ able to do so. It had also been the inventor’s intention to use a cylinder of eighteen inches diameter in his engine, but after one of that size had been cast it was broken up by mistake. So the old twelve-inch cylinder was retained. At this time, also, Fitch made another change in his method of propulsion, substituting three or four broad upright paddles at the stern of the craft for the twelve side oars. The third boat with its essential features as here described was completed late in July of 1788, and — prob¬ ably on one of the last days of that month — received its first important trial. It set out from Philadelphia bear¬ ing Fitch, Voight and a number of others, and steamed to Burlington, a distance of about twenty miles. When just off Burlington a leak developed in the boiler and the engine stopped. The crew dropped down the stream with the tide next day, and the steamboat was the object of scoffing from those in sailing craft on the river. The mishap which had interrupted the first trip of the inventor’s third boat almost at its conclusion was soon repaired, and several other round trips to Burlington were made during the following weeks. On October 12th, 1788, the steamboat took thirty passengers to Burlington in three hours and ten minutes, aided by a tide running about two miles an hour. Probably the speed developed by the vessel during 1788 was some four miles an hour 253 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA in still water. Such a slow rate of movement did not satisfy Fitch, who, despite the personal destitution to which he had long since been reduced, insistently de¬ manded more funds for the boat 1 and continued his labor in improving the machinery and in repeated tests of the vessel until the spring of 1790. At last he obtained a combination of mechanical parts that worked success¬ fully, and on April 16th of 1790 made a trial which caused him to say exultantly: “We reigned Lord High Admirals of the Delaware; and no boat in the River could hold its way with us. . . . Thus has been effected, by little Johnny Fitch and Harry Voight, one of the greatest and most useful arts that has ever been introduced into the world; and although the world and my country does not thank me for it, yet it gives me heartfelt satis¬ faction.” 2 A number of other equally successful voyages soon followed, and for the first time public and newspaper attention was attracted to the invention. Governor Mif¬ flin and numerous state and city officials were passengers on June 16th, and were so impressed that they had Fitch buy a set of flags at their expense. A cabin was built for passengers in the forward part of the craft, and at a for¬ mal test made by the aid of stop-watches the speed of the boat was found to be eight miles an hour. 3 Soon after¬ ward it covered eighty miles in a day and was then put into commission as a regular passenger boat on the Dela¬ ware, making trips in accordance with advertisements previously printed in the local newspapers. The first of these advance notices of the steamboat’s trips had ap- 1 About $S,000 had been expended up to the winter of 1788. 2 The spot on the river-front where Fitch had so long labored had come to be known, as “Conjurer’s Point.” 3 Thornton’s “Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats”: p. 5. 254 Iivmv 4 WS& ■ * dRfewIbw ~~ . '«$ > ^/ *' yti.: o *»*,{ yfy vV-% % '<,&#>. ' :-4, & 1W": IS Mr. Cornell* fvmn mtzvpw&i m' btont 4 thgfr^ngm*. »fl which the Creeps gave «li audible to^ncoarage American Inge*t«|t§te4 mm. :,. , 5, a,;■; w $*Bm W* h : . The Ptefidett. >*hen %iie4 .the ' of *he mdk %mpos *««^wrg treaty—-after which he prefen ted a and v/illcer»mly make his forty n< firing of beads as a token of perpe- I am told ht $$« bow in contempfjf tuai peace, and a paper of tobacco tioit to build a fteam veflej on u he to fmoke in remembrance of it } Mr. fettle, which m ay be capable of c M^Giilivray role, made a flwrt reply tying Might* m • paffengers to _ to the Pitfidem, and received.Wefe^Wki,; md tym to Europe, tokens. One great advantage f fefft forefe* in This .was fuccecded by . the fhab ' thefe voyage which is», that ' J*refident; a Jong of peatx.pc.rformcd tWeis.. How (he would bettfe% by the Creeks, concluded Ms highly a gale of w hid mali.be Ic% to jacereftrag, lakmn, and , dtgnihed ehce todectrmine. H .tranfacHon. Vfel&Jc ^ 1 *•■•./ T'> ? v jnaib or top-hamper J to. lay l Jug. 16 * Lrii Thurfday evening ' fend under, it is probable Ibe the St. Andrew*! Society of (before at feel time be in great .of Hew-York held their quarterly %fg. to. On the M ; | meeting at the City-Tavern, The Traleesof the College of Phtkdel- % Society, anxious of /hewing their re- phfe defied the Hon. judge Wil^m I fectl to th eapag feler of Col. M*Gil~ Prafepbr of Law in -that inftkutton, Jtvray * ad^^E^^elves of his pre- and we hear that he intendb to 4eliwiSr Pence" in this untBimoafly a coorfe of leflures in that important defied hyn an honorary member of branch of education. , the Society, and immediately after a Quere. Whether there h mt an m~ committee was appointed to eondudl propriety Both m fleeting a J udg& te him to it. a Profejfdrjhipi andin ha accepting it f Jug. tj. On Sunday embarked Jug. zi. His Excellency the Prc> onboard one of the Packets, on a fi4ie^c^ vifit to RhodC'lfhnd, his Excellency jjty from Rhode4lf«mdL • ' .J ■ the Prefuient of. the United States, ' On Thurfday the tqth - the Secretary of State, Gov. Clinton, barked for St. Mary’s river, m Gear*- judge Blair, Col. Humphreys, Major ght, in the Poop Betfcy, and le&xxvct“ JaeUbn, and Mr. Nehbn, Experiment, CdL Alexander M*GtL Mxtraii of a letter from Philadelphia, limy, and the fevcr.d fndian Head* J u ihft 1 S * men gnilAVarriors who have been tit *t Pkch’a ftcatn boat really per- thiiady for Ionic ocskspailauendiBg y ms ck&tm. it is a plealure the treaty. Mr. Swan, wc hear, hit f while one js on. b»rd iter in a con- been cfiofai Secretary to Col, M*Gs.L - Wary mud krfupcriority Itvray, md has proceeded with that *d\z met £ . „ J] fhips, officer to rcllde in the Indian ceaniry^ ; whftrtt duii*, mull Jug, ay. We are inferred, via. | inahe a ai§»>ip|| cpw^, ,MW e thL, Bofton, that on the lothofjano fail fe IHif new imm%m vt§th ppcc^lt in . the Kttmul Affcmbfy eJfipkt dc- 1- * direct ime. On Sunday mornmg erred, *• Tim the HKbnai Apcm* ibr feltotf fer Ckiler, fed engages blv wear m turning three diet, in l* ««« k tkzpmmg, % whole honour oj the Juic Thdfi^iPui and M imk$. Gf4 1 t|c4B m a iatcet «£ v»ti 4 ytfec be »c -Page 493 of the Neiv York Magazine for 1790. The printed account of Fitch’s steamboat, beginning at the bottom of the first column, relates to the vessel last shown. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA peared in the Pennsylvania Packet of June 14, 1790, and read: THE STEAMBOAT is now ready to take passengers, and is intended to set off from Arch street P'erry, in Philadelphia, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for Burlington, Bristol, Bordentown, & Trenton, to return on Tues¬ days, Thursdays and Saturdays. Price for passengers 2/6 to Burling¬ ton and Bristol, 3/9 to Bordentown, 5 s. to Trenton. tu.-th. s-tf. During the summer and fall of 1790 the boat ran regularly back and forth between Philadelphia and vari¬ ous towns on the river. The Pennsylvania Packet and Federal Gazette newspapers issued between June 14th and September 10th of 1790 contained twenty-three ad¬ vertisements similar to the one here quoted, announcing, altogether, thirty-one trips to different places. The ag¬ gregate of the advertised trips amounted to thirteen hun¬ dred and eighty miles. Fitch, in his manuscript journal, says the mishaps were few. “The axle-trees,” he men¬ tions, “broke twice; there was nothing but these accidents which could not be repaired in a single hour or two. . . . The boat run five hundred miles between these accidents.” Numerous * accounts of the performances of 1790, either published at the time or written at a later day by men who had personally travelled on the boat or had seen it in operation during the year, are available. The artist Rembrandt Peale was one who was familiar with its work during the time in question, and his memoirs 1 de¬ scribe its appearance and movement. General Joseph Bloomfield, of New Jersey, testified before a committee of the New York legislature in 1814 that he had frequently been a passenger on Fitch’s boat on the Delaware. 2 Doc- 1 Printed in the “Collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania,” Vol. 1, No. 1. 2 “New York Review,” Vol. IV. 256 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA tor William Thornton’s 1 pamphlet gives the recital of an eye-witness of and participant in the steamboat’s activities. “Our boat,” he said, “went at the rate of eight miles an hour in the presence of witnesses yet living.” 2 The French author and traveller, Brissot de Warville, wrote a description of the third boat as it appeared when he saw it operated in 1788, while its speed was only about four miles an hour. 3 The most pretentious contemporary American notice of the vessel’s successful operation in 1790 was published in the New York Magazine 4 for that year, and was an extract from a letter sent from Phila¬ delphia. It ran: “Fitch’s steamboat really performs to a charm. It is a pleasure, while one is on board of her in a contrary wind, to observe her supe¬ riority over the river shallops, sloops, ships, etc., who, to gain anything, must make a zigzag course, while this, our new invented vessel, pro¬ ceeds in a direct line. On Sunday morning she sets off for Chester, 5 and engages to return in the evening — 40 miles. God willing, I in¬ tend to be one of the passengers, were it only to encourage American ingenuity and the fine arts. Fitch is certainly one of the most ingenious creatures alive, and will certainly make his fortune. . . The thing Fitch said he would do had been done. After five years of endeavor the steamboat existed, and moved briskly over the waters before the eyes of men. Steam had been harnessed and applied to the purposes of transportation and travel. A fourth boat, 6 similar to the one which had been running on the Delaware during the summer, was begun in order to comply with the Virginia law. Under its terms at least two steam vessels had to be in operation on the waters of the state by 1 Thornton was a member of Fitch’s company. His account, written in 1810 and published in 1818, is entitled “Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats.” 2 United States Patent Office Report for 1850; Part I, pp. 368-372. 3 “A Recent Journey in the United States of North America, Made in 1788.” Paris, 1791. 4 Page 493. Photographically reproduced in this work. B The regular Sunday trips of the boat throughout the summer of 1790 were to Chester or Burlington. They were somewhat in the nature of popular excursions. 6 It was fittingly named the “Perseverance.” 25 7 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA November 9th, 1790, and the time in which to comply with the requirement and secure a monopoly of steam transportation on all Virginia waters was short. Unfore¬ seen disaster destroyed the plans of the company. The Perseverance, when nearly completed, was torn from her moorings by a violent storm and thrown at high tide on an island in the river from which it was impossible to remove her until too late to fulfill the conditions under which Virginia’s privileges had been granted. The loss of the Virginia monopoly came as a crushing blow to Fitch’s associates, for upon it had been based their principal expectations of future profit. And so, at the very outset of success, the faint-hearted company finally crumbled to pieces. The inventor alone held up his courage. He at once petitioned the Commissioners of Patents to grant him exclusive rights in steam navigation for a limited time; originated a plan to put boats on the Mississippi under the patronage of Spain, and chided his former supporters in a letter in which*he said: “After the many thousands which you have expended to bring for¬ ward the most useful art that was ever introduced into the World, and even after you have perfected it, it seems that you are amazed at what you have done, and lost in contemplating, in thinking, how the world will gaze on the virtuous Few who have so nobly and liberally ren¬ dered such essential service to their Nation. “We had to explore an unbeaten path, and did not ascertain the true course until we had wandered into a thousand wrong Rodes. “I have given my country a most valuable discovery, on the 30 of August, 1785, for which I have received no compensation; and I doubt not but common justice will induce them to do something for me; espe¬ cially when they can do it for the benefit of our Empire. “Another inducement which urges me to persue this scheme is, to put it out of the power of future Generations to make excuses for the present one . . .” In his long petition 1 to the national officials asking for 258 1 Given in its entirety by Westcott. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the sole right to employ steamboats on all the waters of the country Fitch, “having,” as he affirmed, “at length fully succeeded in his scheme, proof of which he is pre¬ pared to oiler, he trusts he now comes forward, not as an imaginary projector, but as a man who, contrary to 70.—Fitch’s fifth boat. His fourth was wrecked by a storm when nearly com¬ pleted. The fifth beat was a screw propeller, operated on Collect Pond, New York City, in 1796 or 1797. Its hull was a ship’s yawl, and the craft was an experiment in the inventor’s work for the better application of steam power. A model of one of Fitch’s steamboats, later made by one of his assistants, is in the New York Historical Society’s collections. the popular expectation, has really accomplished a design which on examination will clearly evince the many and important advantages which must result therefrom to the United States. . . , m All active effort to carry on the work of building and running steamboats seems to have been abandoned in 1791. Biddle’s Philadelphia Directory for the year men¬ tioned, published in May, contained the following entry: “Fitch, John, owner of the steamboat, 462 No. Second St.” A picture of the affairs of the company and of Fitch’s destitution at that time was afterward written by Thomas 1 Letters patent for the steamboat were granted by the government to Fitch on April 23, 1791, and formally issued to him in a signed document on August 26. Exclusive privi¬ leges were refused. Thomas Jefferson, whom Fitch had violently antagonized, was one of the Patent Commissioners. 259 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA P. Cope, of Philadelphia, 1 who lived in the city during the building of the steamboats. “I often witnessed the performance of the boat in 1788, ’89 and ’90,” reads the narrative. “It was propelled by paddles in the stern, and constantly getting out of order. I saw it when it was returning from a trip to Burlington, from whence it was said to have arrived in little more than two hours. When coming to off Kensington, some part of the machinery broke, and I never saw it in motion afterward. I believe it was his last effort. . . . Indeed, they [the company] already rendered themselves the subjects of ridicule and derision, for their temerity and presumption in giving countenance to this wild projector and visionary madman. The company thereupon gave up the ghost, the boat went to pieces, and Fitch became bankrupt and broken-hearted. Often have I seen him stalking about like a troubled spectre, with down¬ cast eye and lowering countenance, his coarse soiled linen peeping through the elbows of a tattered garment. During the days of his aspir¬ ing hopes, two mechanics were of sufficient daring to work for him. . These were Peter Brown, shipsmith, and John Wilson, Boat builder. . . . From Wilson I derived the following anecdote: Fitch called to see him as usual — Brown happened to be present. Fitch mounted his hobby, and became unusually eloquent in the praise of steam, and of the benefits which mankind were destined to derive from its use in propelling boats . . . After indulging himself for some time in this never failing topic of deep excitement, he concluded with these memorable words: ‘Well, gentlemen, although I shall not live to see the time, you will, when steamboats will be preferred to all other means of conveyance, and especially for passengers; and they will be particularly useful in the navigation of the River Mississippi.’ He then retired; on which Brown, turning to Wilson, exclaimed, in a tone of deep sympathy, ‘Poor fellow! What a pity he is crazy.’ ” In 1793 Fitch went to France. 2 He had previously met in Philadelphia a man named Aaron Vail, the United States consul to L’Orient, France, who became interested in the steamboat and proposed, on his return to his official post, to secure patents and build such vessels under French laws. Fitch had bound himself to send over to Europe a man competent to construct the proposed craft, 1 To be found in Hazard’s “Register of Pennsylvania,” Vol. vii, under the signature of “Epoc.” [Cope]. 2 See Thornton’s “Short Account”; William A. Duer’s “A Reply to C. D. Colden’s Vindication,” 1819; Watson’s “Annals of Philadelphia”; Whittelsey’s “Life,” etc. 260 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA and having no one to whom he might delegate the duty, went himself. He arrived during a time when all ordi¬ nary enterprises were at a standstill, 1 and finding it im¬ possible to proceed with the contemplated design, left his steamboat drawings, plans and specifications in the hands of Vail, who was established as a merchant in L’Orient, and came back to America by way of England. Little of Fitch’s work remains to be told. He lived in Philadelphia and New York City until late in 1797 or early in 1798, and seems still to have been intent in perfecting the method of steam transportation. In 1851 John Hutchings, of New York, published a broadside" describing an experiment that Fitch made with a steam¬ boat on Collect Pond, New York City, 3 either in 1796 or 1797, and in which Hutchings, then a youth, assisted him. The boat was a ship’s yawl, and was moved by a steam-engine turning a screw propeller at the stern. It also had revolving paddles of the modern type at the sides. At last Fitch ceased the hopeless struggle. In order that he might no longer hear the laughter of his fellow men he went out into the Kentucky wilderness, apart from bickering and jeers, and there, in a quiet and unob¬ trusive way made an end of his troubled life. 4 Yet even amid the primeval woods, during the few final months, his mind and fingers were busy with the work which had engrossed him. He built of brass a strange contrivance some three feet long that was found after his death, and is illustrated among these pages. Although it has a smoke¬ stack with an elbow at the top, apparently designed with 1 The French Revolution was in progress. 2 Reprinted in O’Callaghan’s “Documentary History of New York.” 3 The pond was on the present site of the Tombs prison, Center Street. * He saved many small narcotic pills, prescribed s ngly by a doctor for some trivial ailment, and swallowed them all at once. His death took place in June or July of 1798. 261 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the idea of preventing a downward draught while mov¬ ing at high speed against the wind, 1 and though the engine rested on a rectangular truck with four solid and flanged wheels, 2 this model of a steam-engine has always been discussed as one for a steamboat mechanism. A St. Louis newspaper 3 of 1854, while the original model was in that city, said: “It was evidently thus arranged for the purpose of exhibiting the power of steam in propelling boats, and was constructed on a railway immersed in a trough of the proper depth for the paddles to strike th$ water, and when the motion was given, the wheels would guide it along the submerged railway.” The theory here expounded, and since accepted by those who have known of Fitch’s last model or seen it, appears questionable when considered in connection with what had already been done by the man who designed and built it. Fitch had not found it necessary, in proving that steam could be used in moving a boat, to drag down the hull by a wheeled truck and keep the whole fabric on a submerged track along which it should move in a straight line. The added weight of truck and wheels, and the friction of wheels on sub¬ merged rails would retard the progress of the boat, if motive power was imparted to paddles alone. In prac¬ tise the laying, maintaining and repairing of such a track would not be possible. River bottoms do not lend them¬ selves to such a method of transportation. In deep water the wooden hull would either float the wheels off the track or else the wheeled underbody would pull the hull down, with unpleasant consequences to crew and passen- 1 The same idea was suggested for railroad locomotives a half century afterward. When the early lithographer made the picture reproduced in this work he showed the smoke-stack elbow pointed forward! Doubtless the whole stack had been twisted around. 2 With the wheels inside the truck, as some early railway engines and cars were first constructed. * The “Democrat.” 262 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 71.—Last known handiwork of Fitch, made in Kentucky a short time before his death, in 1798. The model of a steam-engine is of brass and has a truck and flanged wheels to enable it to run on rails. If it operated successfully it was a miniature steam railway locomotive. When in possession of the St. Louis Mercantile Library, in 1854, the model was considered to be that of a steamboat engine. gers. In short, the suggestion that the model under consideration was designed as a practical appliance to move a floating steamboat apparently reduces itself to an absurdity. Fitch, by successive steps covering years of time, had 263 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA created the steamboat out of a mental vision. He had built such a craft and operated it in regular advertised traffic for months at a stretch, covering a thousand miles or more at the rate of from six to eight miles an hour. He had solved that particular problem, and his whole habit of mind while engaged in his work had always ex¬ hibited a steady process of progression toward something a little better and more practical. Yet his last thoughts regarding the application of steam power to travel and transportation found their expression in an engine resting on a rectangular truck and moving over rails on four flanged wheels. He had said: “Neither do I conceive that all the Improvements that are yet to be made on steam are to be done on the water.” It is perhaps possible to believe that he took the one last forward step; that he saw the railroad of the future just as he had seen the steamboat, and in the American wilderness, in 1798, built in miniature the first free moving, railway steam locomotive created by the brain and hand of man. The model was in existence a few years ago, and if it still remains intact a competent examination and test of it under its own power on a railway track might finally determine the purpose for which it was built. The many letters and utterances of Fitch show he had a clear comprehension of the service he had per¬ formed, and that his chief impulse was the accomplish¬ ment of his task for “the benefit of our Empire.” While his fellow men, still dazed at the discovery of their own independence, stood looking backward into the past like a boy who gazes awestruck into the chasm he has leaped, Fitch looked into the coming years and saw what they were yet to do. But his arguments, pleadings and 264 a*’ . . ^ ■« i : '• SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE ox. ,;i ■& 1 ■ ? ■■* ORIGIN yt ■ **? ; iJ $*• OF 3 % h I ;'V >•/. £ ■' , : I fe ,•*, r , ***** ^ I- J * v [ •• %. ♦ * WRITTEN IN 1810 , By W. THORNTON, Of the City of Washington* 9 .4 (-Wa 4 | r?f •1 I a r fe r ALBANY: fUmTED HT E. AND t- HOSFOBD, STATE-STBUtt’* 1818 , m ■ P qi Jf % { * m -V>V ^ 'X* 72.—Early literature relating to travel in America. Title page of Thornton’s pamphlet in description of Fitch’s boats. Thornton was a member of Fitch’s company in Philadelphia, when the vessels were built and operated. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA demonstrations were necessarily without effect. The .col¬ lective popular opinion of a newly created state resem¬ bles in many ways the mentality of an individual in the early period of self-consciousness. Some things are be¬ yond its comprehension. A knowledge of what Fitch did has been easy of access. The contemporary records, some of which are here reproduced, have been open for men to read. Yet it has been the custom to dismiss him, in discussing the de¬ velopment of steam travel in America, by saying he lived before his time. The expression is a familiar one, often adopted by a people for application to such a case in an effort to rid themselves of responsibility and place the blame where they wish it might belong — on the man who had presumption to do things his contemporaries did not appreciate. But the splendor of inspiration and original creation is not dimmed by such an artifice. No man is born before his time, for the days in which he lives belong to him, and are the ones that witness the performance of his labor. If what he offers is not accepted by his fellow men it is not because he is before his time, but because they refuse to walk beside him and accept the years of advance¬ ment that lie within his gift. The greater loss is theirs; not his. So it was in this case, and so passes the last indi¬ vidual figure of the story. Fitch was a genius cursed with a knowledge of the greatness of his own derided achieve¬ ment. There can be no fate more sad than that. It is idle to consider what would have happened if men of power had fought with one another for the privi¬ lege of aiding him and enriching themselves, as would be the case in like circumstance to-day. Had that thing hap¬ pened the whole country east of the Mississippi would probably have been overrun by the aid of steam some 266 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA twenty or twenty-five years before it was conquered in that way, with resultant consequences on all social and economic progress, both in America and the world, which forbid speculation. Fitch’s method of travel was laughed aside, but did not die. It slept. CHAPTER XVI THE AGE OF THE FLATBOAT, ARK AND KEEL-BOAT BEGINS — EFFECT OF THE OPENING OF THE NORTHWEST TERRI¬ TORY — A MILLION PEOPLE DRIFT THROUGH THE IN¬ TERIOR— LIFE ON THE FLATBOATS — CONTRASTS OF TRAGEDY AND REVEL — DESCRIPTIONS AND USES OF THE VARIOUS CRAFT BY WHICH THE FIRST GENERAL TRAVEL TO THE OHIO COUNTRY AND MIDDLE WEST WAS ACCOMPLISHED T HE era of the flatboat, ark and keel-boat had already begun. With the passage of the Northwest Ordi¬ nance by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787 the territory now included in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illi¬ nois, Michigan and Wisconsin was thrown open to set¬ tlement, and a general public interest in the immense re¬ gion beyond the mountains and the Ohio River swept through the original seacoast colonies. Hundreds of thousands of the population, to which aggregate each state contributed a share, decided to journey to the west¬ ern country and set up new homes in the forest. Prepara¬ tions for the migration affected every locality of the East. That part of the interior toward which the eyes of the coast inhabitants were now turned was unknown in its details to the bulk of the people, though a knowledge of its essential characteristics and the best ways of getting there had been spread through the occupied areas by means of tales brought back by numerous frontier travel- 268 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 73.—River travel before the age of steamboats. The co’ered keel-boat, or barge, was for many years the principal river craft for quick journeys, espe¬ cially up-stream. Barges often had sleeping bunks, but passengers carried their own bedding. The captain blew a horn at starting time. This and the illustrations to No. 90, inclusive, show the various types of drifting and man-propelled boats used from about 1788 until after the general intro¬ duction of steamboats, and indicate the manner in which hundreds of thou¬ sands floated down the Ohio and Mississippi to settle in the interior. lers. The country was known to be densely wooded, and very fertile after the forest had been swept away. It could most easily be reached by the Ohio River, which traversed the border of the region for nearly a thousand miles and whose numerous tributaries furnished routes through the southern part of the inviting lands for con¬ siderable distances. The northern section of the terri¬ tory affected by the Ordinance was all but unknown. It was not considered at the beginning of the first general westward rush of the people, because it could not be pene¬ trated. The difficulties and dangers of such an attempt were too great to be wisely undertaken. A journey to the head waters of the Ohio, at the time 269 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA the Confederation established an organized government for the so-called Northwest Territory, no longer pre¬ sented peril to human life and could be made, in good weather, without extreme hardship. The wagon roads of settled sections in the East, together with the system of pack-train trails and wilderness roads leading toward the frontier from the domain of busier highways, constituted available paths to the upper Ohio region from every part of the Atlantic coast between Connecticut and Virginia. Things were getting easier. The one human quality essential in the successful performance of the trip from the seaboard to the Ohio was a physical capacity for en¬ during exposure and hard work during a period of from two to five weeks. All that was required after vehicular roads were left behind was the organization of a pack- train, and in due course of time the migrating bands — or such part of them as did not succumb to illness or acci¬ dent on the way — climbed the last hill and caught a glimpse, in the distance, of the fabled and beautiful river thenceforward to bear them toward new lives and hab¬ itations. Arriving at Redstone, Pittsburgh, or whatever other settlement was the goal of their overland travel, the west¬ ward movers established themselves in camp for a period of recuperation, and the men folk of the party set about the work of obtaining transportation facilities suitable for their future needs. The boats were sometimes bought ready built, but were more often constructed by the trav¬ ellers themselves 1 from trees felled on the spot. The curious craft destined to play a large part for a generation in the travel movement which populated the 1 Especially in the early stages of the westward movement by water. After the first year or two many axmen and carpenters made a regular business of building boats and keeping them in stock at every river town. 270 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Ohio and upper Mississippi valleys were of several types. Throughout thirty or forty years they were extensively used, and within that period probably a million people lived in them for weeks at a time, during journeys of from three hundred to two thousand miles. They were built by tens of thousands, yet not one of them remains as 74.—The flatboat, Ohio-boat or Kentucky-boat. Most common type of vehicle for river travel during the population movements that led to the permanent occupation of the Mississippi valley by the whites. It was entirely enclosed and was, in fact, a floating house. Such a boat was seldom pulled against a current. a memorial of the vehicles which bore so important a share in the nation’s expansion. Roman galleys and ships of the early Norsemen have been found for modern eyes to look upon, but there is small chance for future Amer¬ icans ever to see an example of the quaint boats into which men, women, children, horses, pigs, chickens, cows, dogs, 271 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA kegs of powder, dishes, furniture, boxes of provisions and farm implements were all loaded and jumbled together, to float down the rivers to somewhere. They resembled — those unwieldy vessels of such a short time ago — a mixture of log cabin, fort, floating barnyard and country grocery. At night, as they drifted on the dark waters, their loopholes often spurted jets of rifle fire, while wom¬ en loaded the hot rifles of the men in the flickering light of pine knots held by silent children, and watched for the answering shots of red enemies through the mist that hid them. By day, on a more kindly voyage, some backwoods genius on the cabin roof would touch the resin to his fiddle-bow and send the wild strains of a hoe-down to the wooded shores and back again, while the family mule gave vent to his emotions in a loud heehaw, the pigs squealed, the children shouted and danced to the melody of the combined orchestra, and the women rolled up the bedding, milked the cow, hung out the wash and killed a few chickens for dinner. 1 Perhaps no other craft that ever moved on land or sea provided such episodes and contrasts, such diverse pictures of tragedy and revel, as did the flatboats in which the vast host of floating pil¬ grims travelled the interior rivers of America from about 1788 until as late a date as 1840. 2 It is desirable at this point to refer to a certain feature of the narrative mentioned at its beginning — the chrono¬ logical and geographical overlapping of periods of travel movement, and the duplication of vehicle epochs as new territory toward the west came under the sway of the 1 A couple of the older boys would very likely be catching fish at the same time. 3 Although a noticeable part of the westward migration to the Ohio and Mississippi valleys was carried on by means of flatb’oats until the last named date, that sort of travel- . ling began to decline swiftly soon after the year 1830. The rapid multiplication of steam¬ boats caused ihe change. h'latboats would have disappeared still earlier had not the flimsy character of western steamboats during the first twenty years of their history made the use of them so dangerous. 272 75.—A helmsman on a flatboat, shouting a warning to some one at the other end of the vessel, or to a near-by boat. Sketch by Joshua Shaw. I A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA white race. In the conquest of a continent so large, re¬ quiring a period of nearly two and a half centuries for its completion, it was inevitable that the earlier stages of the process should be repeated in regions successively invaded. This was most noticeable during the generations be¬ fore inventive genius and mechanical appliances made their appearance as predominant elements in the problem, and was to some extent true with regard to the use of large timber boats. But every method of conveyance arose to its ascend¬ ency at one time or another, and each one—even if it played a minor part either before or after the period of its especial importance — must be chiefly considered with relation to the time and events of its greatest prominence. The long historical sequence of human endeavors that were consciously aimed toward better methods of prog¬ ress over the land, and were unconsciously directed to¬ ward wider territorial dominion, new social conditions and national unity, resembled the march of an army. The temporary use of some means of locomotion outside of its normal place in the column of events was but the work of a scouting party, not to be unduly exalted in a chronicle of the main campaign. Previous generations could not see the whole process as we may, nor observe the rela¬ tionships and effects of its various stages, for they were too close to it; they were themselves engaged in a work now completed. Still another phase of the development of travel facil¬ ities that attracts attention in any consideration of their influence is the unusual manner by which, as a rule, they have advanced toward greater efficiency. Successive early improvements in transportation are not only classifiable by groups, but are perhaps unlike the correspond- 274 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ing steps of any other economic process because, in a sense, they have nearly always progressed backward. Broadly speaking, there have thus far been four general phases of travel history in America, to be roughly de¬ fined as follows: First Period: During which all travel was performed. 76.—Travellers on top of a flatboat. During a long voyage, lasting for weeks or months, the principal diversions of the emigrants were story telling, sing¬ ing, and dancing on the upper deck to the accompaniment of the universal fiddle. A ladder or flight of steps led down into the interior. when possible, through the utilization of natural water¬ ways and in the most primitive craft. Second Period: Distinguished by the extensive use of prior overland routes—the Indian trails—and the crea¬ tion of other land roads by white men. Third Period: Characterized by the elaboration of earlier vehicles for both land and water travel; such con- 275 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA veyances being moved either by manual labor, animals, the wind, or natural water currents. Fourth Period: In which both boats and land vehi¬ cles, of types already existing, were for the first time pro¬ pelled by mechanical power generated within the convey¬ ances themselves. During this cycle, which still prevails, the boats and land carriages have gradually been in¬ creased in size and altered in form. No sharply defined lines emphasized these epochs, for there have been times when all of them have prevailed at once, though in widely separated parts of the land. Un¬ til very recent days it has almost always been the case that at least two of the periods existed simultaneously some¬ where within the limits of the country, either in the same locality while earlier conditions were giving way to later ones, or in adjacent regions. But every section of the continent has witnessed the arrival and progress of all four eras in some degree at least, always in the procession here indicated and in orderly advancement from the East toward the West. The conditions that have so often resulted in the bet¬ terment of travel facilities by means of a retrogressive method are due to a relation which has necessarily pre- * vailed between vehicles themselves and the roadways on which they move. No means of travel can attain its ut¬ most value unless the conveyance and its highway, of whatever sort, are mutually fitted fon your left and big bar on your right, then straighten down; don’t go near the shore until you get 300 yards further down, then keep, nearest that shore until vou get to HENDERSONVILLE, left side.. 798 10 8001 807 | am 78.—Text printed in Cummings’ “Western Pilot” to accompany the particular chart shown in the preceding illustration. Similarly explicit directions were given, both by illustration and text, for navigating each mile of the river’s course. troduced on the Mississippi svstem of waters, together with certain modifications of them. A few new forms better suited to the larger streams and greater dangers of 1 Eastern emigrants to the West, on reaching the Ohio, at first built the sort of boats with which they were most familiar. 279 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA western navigation also appeared. One result of the in¬ vasion of the interior by floating domestic establishments of the period was a confusion of the names by which such craft were known in different localities. This did not matter at the time, for everybody then understood the differences or similarities between a broadhorn, a keel- boat, a Durham boat and an ark, as well as a twentieth century man knows what is meant by street-car, automo¬ bile, subway or aeroplane. But the early travellers who left accounts of the first overrunning of the West never wrote explanatory descriptions designed for the enlight¬ enment of those who, in the future, might want to find out just how the people undertook their long journeys. When one of them had occasion for mentioning a boat he referred to it by a name common to one neighborhood or river, omitting to say that the same identical sort of craft, or a type very similar, was known elsewhere by a differ¬ ent name. Nor did they describe the floating homes of the moving population in careful detail. Only by the comparison of various narratives and the piecing together of numerous references can the extensive river travel of the early West, as carried on for about forty years, be seen in substance as it was. Any description of it must be a composite picture, a mosaic made of many fragments joined as best they may be, with many details gone. A list of the several kinds of non-mechanical river boats used during the days when water travel by means of them was at its climax, together with a short description of each and mention of its origin and utility will illumi¬ nate the time and its habits. Such a catalogue may con¬ sequently be given. The most simple of the boats still in use for river travel was the log canoe. It was employed by one or two 280 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA men, particularly when the need of speed became urgent, and could be bought for three dollars or less. A pirogue 1 was a very large canoe, often forty or fifty feet long and six or eight feet wide, capable of carrying a family and several tons of household goods. It was some¬ times employed after danger from Indians had ceased, but vulnerability to attack made it unpopular for long trips on western streams in the early part of the white inva¬ sion. The pirogue cost from five to twenty dollars, ac¬ cording to size. The skiff was a wide, flat-bottomed affair, made of planks, similar to the small pleasure boat bearing the same name to-day. It was occasionally used by parties of two or three on long trips, but was most commonly em¬ ployed as an attendant on the big boats for use in carrying their occupants to shore when necessary. The value of a skiff was about five dollars. A batteau was a very big skiff that bore to its smaller brother the same relation a pirogue held to a canoe. The batteau could carry a family, cost from twenty to fifty dollars, and was moved down-stream by several pairs of long oars called sweeps. Another sweep served as rudder. On up-stream trips it was propelled by poles. The keel-boat 2 received its name because it had at the bottom, and extending for its whole length, a heavy tim¬ ber about four inches wide and equally thick. The timber was so placed to take the shock of a collision with any submerged obstruction. Stout planks served in construct¬ ing the hull. It was usually from forty to seventy-five feet long, from seven to nine feet wide, and carried a mast and sails. One steersman and two men at the sweeps could 1 Sometimes spelled peroque or perrogue. Likewise of Indian origin. 2 It developed from the batteau. The early illustration of boats on the Mohawk River gives a good idea of the appearance of one type of keel-boat. 281 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA navigate the keel-boat down-stream, but its progress against the current was effected by the wind or the labor of men at setting-poles. The cost of such a craft was from $2.50 to $3.00 for each foot of its length. Keel-boats were extensively used on every navigable stream in the country. They originated in the East, probably by independent de¬ velopment in several localities, and gradually assumed certain standard sizes and shapes. Introduced on west¬ ern waters at the outset of the great migration which be¬ gan in 1788, they were long employed there both in their original form and with modifications to be related in connection with the barge and Ohio packet-boats. 1 Mohawk boats were the sort of keel-boats used on that river, or any similarly shallow stream. Schenectady boats were Mohawk keel-boats. Both were names used in New York. The Durham boat was a keel-boat shaped much like an Indian bark canoe, and it acquired its name from a celebrated eastern builder of river vessels. He was Rob¬ ert Durham, of Pennsylvania, who began turning out his product about the year 1750 for use on the Delaware River, where the craft became very popular. A descrip¬ tion of them 2 reads: “Durham boats were 6o feet long, 8 feet wide, and 2 feet deep, and when laden with 15 tons drew 20 inches of water. The stern and bow were sharp, on which were erected small decks, while a running board extended the whole length of the boat on each side. 3 They carried a mast with two sails, and were manned by a crew of five men, one steer¬ ing, and four pushing forward with setting-poles, two being on each side.” The ark was a type of boat originating either on the Susquehanna or Delaware River. After Indian warfare 1 The keel-boat was also the immediate ancestor of the canal boat. 2 From Pearce's “Annals of Luzerne.” 3 Running boards were a necessary feature of all keel-boats. On these long, narrow platforms the pole-men walked while they pushed. 282 79.—Another group of travellers smoking and telling stories on a flat-boat. Showing the knee-breeches, hunt¬ ing-shirt, moccasins, coon-skin cap and long clay pipes of the period; also, a small hatch leading down into the boat. Sketch by Joshua Shaw. i A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ceased in the West the ark was very popular on the Ohio, Mississippi and all other streams in that part of the coun¬ try. It was usually from seventy-five to a hundred feet long, fifteen to twenty feet wide and from three to five feet deep. Heavy timbers and planks were necessary for its construction, and the lumber necessary in building one cost about a hundred dollars. The ark had vertical bul¬ warks all around, and both bow and stern ended in a broad V-shaped point. So huge and unwieldy was the vessel that it was much at the mercy of the current, and only a general guidance could be given to it by side sweeps and steering. The steering oar was a wide sweep about forty feet long, requiring the strength of two men for its manipulation. An ark could never go up-stream. On reaching its destination it was sold for what the timber would bring — ten to twenty-five dollars — or else broken up for metamorphosis into a cabin and furniture. On west¬ ern waters the ark usually had a wooden house for the family near one end, and an enclosure at the other for the live stock. It was never roofed entirely over, and, be¬ cause of its inability for defense, was not widely adopted until the country was tranquil and travelling was freed from the incidents of warfare. A Susquehanna boat was an ark used on that stream. The flatboat was the standard water vehicle for trav¬ elling families, and was a creation of the Ohio River valley. In size it varied greatly, each craft being orig¬ inally built or bought in accordance with the needs of the party intending to occupy it. Due consideration was given, in its construction, to the nature of the stream or streams to be navigated, the length of the trip, the purpose to which the timber was to be put at the end of the voyage, and probability of attack by hostile natives. It was never 284 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 80.—The broadhorn was an Ohio or Mississippi family flatboat with three steering oars, two of which stuck out, like huge horns, from the sides of the structure. The flag was exceptional. less than twenty feet long by ten feet in width, and some¬ times developed into a huge floating domicile sixty feet in length and eighteen or twenty feet wide. The hull of such a boat was made of big square timbers of hard wood, and it drew from a foot to two and a half feet of water when full laden. Its timber hull rose, under like condi¬ tions, three or four feet above the surface of the river — sometimes even more — thus making it an oaken fort with sides often eight or ten inches thick and impervious to rifle fire. Upright timbers four feet high and four or five inches thick were set on top of the hull, and the whole was then enclosed, like a house, with heavy planks. A similar roof 285 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA completed the structure, which contained a barricaded entrance, loopholes,- a window or two and a trap-door for upward egress. The flatboat floated at the mercy of the current, and was steered by a big sweep as long as the vessel itself. A small craft of the sort required the atten¬ tion of three men. Its cost was about three or four dollars for each foot of length. The top was occasionally — but not often — built in a slightly arched form, and after the time of Indian hostilities had ceased the live stock was kept out-of-doors, in an open yard added to one end of the boat. The family wash was hung out to dry on the roof, and sometimes a fond parent would also fence in a space on the upper deck to serve as a playground for the chil¬ dren. The Kentucky boat was a small or medium-sized water conveyance like the one just described. The name was given to such as were bound for the Kentucky region or lower Ohio. New Orleans boats were big flatboats destined for the lower Mississippi. A broadhorn was a similar craft whose movements were habitually regulated, as far as possible, by two big sweeps that projected like horns from each side of the boat. Vessels of the flatboat type rarely proceeded up¬ stream. * The barge was built somewhat after the style of a ship’s long-boat, and closely resembled the keel-boat pre¬ viously discussed. It was from thirty to seventy feet long, seven to twelve feet in width, and carried a mast, sails and rudder. Its down-stream progress was accelerated either by the wind or by four of the crew who wielded long oars. When going up a river the motive power was supplied by numerous men who used the familiar iron-tipped poles. 286 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Barges cost about five dollars for each foot of length, and — with keel-boats — were the most rapid of all convey¬ ances for water travel. They were used by business men whose time was valuable, by land speculators and govern¬ ment officials. Under ordinary circumstances they could make from four to five miles an hour with the current, and when going in the contrary direction attained a speed of about two miles an hour. 1 Barges had covered enclosures for passengers. Some¬ times the protection thus given was in the shape of a house built in the center of the boat, supported by timbers at its four corners and surmounted by a gable roof. At other times 2 the vessel was almost completely covered by a flat-topped superstructure of bullet-proof construction containing loopholes and even embrasures for the firing of small cannon. During troublous times the barge was. anchored at night and sentries were posted. 3 The Ohio packet-boat was a magnified barge, or keel- boat. In size it ranged from seventy-five to a hundred feet long by fifteen or twenty feet wide, with the passen¬ ger cabin usually in the stern. The steersman stood on the cabin roof. It had a mast and sails, was equipped with many pole-men, and on occasion the crew even went ashore and towed the boat by means of a long rope. Such packets, carrying both passengers and freight, plied regu¬ larly between Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Louisville be¬ fore the beginning of the steamboat era in the West. By travelling on a swift packet-boat a man could go from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh and back again in a month, and even have a day or so to devote to business before starting on the return trip. 1 Even more if the wind was from a favorable quarter. 2 Especially during periods when trouble with the Indians was feared. 3 All river craft carried anchors, and night navigation on western rivers was not usually attempted until about 1800. CHAPTER XVII A RIVER JOURNEY THAT ENDED IN TRAGEDY — MANY VOY¬ AGERS IGNORANT OF WILDERNESS EXPEDIENTS — THE WESTERN BOATMEN — THEIR APPEARANCE, HABITS AND SPEECH — FURNISHINGS OF A FLATBOAT — DAN¬ GERS OF NAVIGATION — HUMAN VULTURES — FIRST PERIODIC BOAT TRAFFIC — OHIO PACKETS — THE ADMIRAL OF A FLOATING DEPARTMENT STORE — TIME CONSUMED ON TRIPS — END OF THE FLATBOAT PERIOD N O extensive accounts exist by which the amount of flatboat travel on western rivers from about 1788 until its final disappearance can be approximately reck¬ oned. It began at a still earlier date, when a journey of the sort was folly and its consequences almost sure disaster. One of the first important organized trips of the sort was made by about two hundred and fifty people then living on the upper waters of the Tennessee, who had decided to remove to a locality on the Cumberland River in North Carolina. They proceeded by water in order to avoid the shorter but more laborious overland march, and started in the winter of 1779-1780. Thirty boats — probably keel-boats or batteaux — were built to carry the people, and the voyagers did not reach their destination until April 24th of 1780, after enduring much hardship. Their new home was separated from the nearest neighbors by more than two hundred 288 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 81.—A little flatboat, equipped with a sail, used for down-stream journeys on some small and shallow rivers of the East. miles of wilderness, and so out of touch with the world did the self-exiled party find itself that its members or¬ ganized a little republic, similar to the one of Wautaga, and also based on a written document. Disease, the In¬ dians and social isolation proved fatal to the venture so bravely yet foolishly begun. 1 But twenty of the original party remained in the settlement in 1792, and of those twenty only one is credited by tradition with a natural death. About three hundred Kentucky boats are believed to have passed down the Ohio during the year of 1780, 2 and 1 Clannish migrations, limited to one party however large, have not generally been successful in any period or country, and have not had a lasting influence on the occupied territory. All permanently important migrations have originated in a widely distributed public interest prior to the movement itself, and the first travellers in such cases have carried with them a confidence or certainty that others were to follow. That feeling of support has often been more valuable than mere numbers in sustaining pioneers in a new country. 2 Those who made the trip before 1788 were bound for Kentucky. 289 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 82.—An Orleans or Mississippi boat. Constructed on the lines of the covered Ohio boat, but larger and heavier. Used in descending the Mississippi, and often equipped with a sail. From a drawing by the American artist,. Henry Lewis. a small but increasing flow of travel continued westward on the river thereafter until 1788. Then came the onrush of a whole people; the first national surge of the tide des¬ tined to continue under many different aspects of move¬ ment, but always due to similar impulses and purposes, until the oceans were united. The people did not then, nor for long afterward, have the shores of the Pacific as their avowed objective. What they wanted was new homes, wealth, and soil over which they could become the individual proprietors. Impelled onward by those as¬ pirations they made their periodic advances, using each time, as an aid to their westward progress, the transporta- 290 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA tion method best fitted for the journey immediately at hand. This time they built boats; floated with the cur¬ rents of the rivers; pushed themselves along by poles; lifted sails to catch the breezes; pulled themselves onward by ropes. Any way served as long as they made visible progress over the waters bearing them into the new coun¬ try. And as they moved they fought, sang, fished, swore dreadful oaths, quarrelled among themselves, aided one another when in peril or distress, brought new children into the world, and buried their dead in haste that thev might not lose an hour of the precious daylight or a favoring wind. By the later part of the year 1788 a human flood was upborne by the flood beneath. Flotillas of fantastic craft dotted the surface of the winding rivers. New settle¬ ments sprang up along the banks of the Ohio, 1 and all those scenes attendant on the evolution of a wilderness frontier into a region suffering its first acute attack of civilization were again in progress of repetition. 2 Practically all the invaders who so suddenly poured over the mountains and launched themselves headlong into extensive voyages on the Ohio and Mississippi sys¬ tems of rivers were lacking in knowledge of the country through which they were to journey. Those who came from cities and towns of the East were also ignorant of the many expedients by which wilderness life, especially on a river trip, could be made more safe and easy. As a conse¬ quence they sought advice and aid before embarking, and 1 Cincinnati and Marietta were founded in 1788. Cincinnati, then called Losantiville, at once became the most important western outpost, and its big timber fortification was named Fort Washington. The town was afterward a headquarters for all the white men's campaigns against the Indians until the natives gave up their struggle. 2 The line where primitive races and civilization meet in final contest for supremacy is distinguished for a time by a display of the worst qualities of both those states of society. The more highly cultured combatants lapse from the standard elsewhere slowly attained and, as a class, resort to many of the cruder methods which they are avowedly seeking to eliminate. 291 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA generally made arrangements by which several flatboats were to travel together as a little fleet. The head of the family or party would also, if possible, hire a frontiers¬ man to go with the boat and take charge of its navigation. Through those conditions there was created a class of men known as western boatmen, who became familiar with all the vagaries of the rivers and fertile in every device that 83.—Mississippi flatboat with superstructure of rough lumber. Craft of this sort were used by families which intended to use the lumber for house building after reaching their destinations. might be helpful in an emergency. The professional boatman of the West spent years in travelling down the streams and back again, and became one of the most in¬ teresting figures of frontier life the needs of the country have ever produced. He was of the restless type that in every period of American development has done the unusual and dan¬ gerous thing just for the love of doing it; who has never been satisfied unless each new day brought some unex¬ pected event; who has only been happy when he could always keep moving. He was an epicure of excitement. Work no other man could do was his one luxurv. In •/ physical make-up the typical boatman was tall, thin and sinewy. His immobile face was tanned to a dark brown, 292 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA and from above high cheek-bones and a long nose two dull gray eyes gazed blankly. In his normal state he was si¬ lently waiting for something to happen, knowing quite well it certainly would. When the bomb of circumstance exploded the human creature was on that dot of time transformed into a combination of rubber ball, wildcat and shrieking maniac, all controlled by instantaneous per¬ ception and exact calculation. After the tumult he subsided again into his listless lethargy of waiting, the monotony being endured by chewing tobacco and illus¬ trating the marvelous accuracy with which he could propel a stream of its juice for any distance up to fifteen feet. 1 The costume he wore was as picturesque as his per¬ sonality, and in essential features was so widely adopted as to be almost a uniform. It consisted of a bright red flannel shirt covered by a loose blue coat — called a jer¬ kin — that reached only to his hips, and coarse brown trousers of linsey-woolsey. His head covering was a cap of untanned skin, often with the fur side out; the uni¬ versal moccasins clad his feet, and from a leather belt hung his hunting-knife and tobacco pouch. Still a third distinguishing feature of the professional . flatboatman was his iridescent vocabulary. As was the case with all Americans of the age he spoke in a ceaseless series of metaphors, similes and comparisons. Everything was described, whether the thing discussed was an inani¬ mate object or human action, by likening it to something else. And, as was the fact through all classes of frontier people, he colored his discourse with references revealing his own occupation. In any miscellaneous backwoods as¬ semblage of those years an expert in native speech could 1 Boatmen, and many other men of the time, prided themselves on this accomplish¬ ment, and often made wagers on hitting a knot-hole or a fly. 293 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA have correctly told the kind of work done by most of the men in the gathering simply by listening to their talk for half an hour. When a boatman wanted to say that some act had been performed with celerity he declared it had happened “quicker nor a alligator can chaw a puppy.” To be silent, in his phraseology, was to be “dumb as a dead nigger in a mud-hole.” If he warned a companion to run he did it by shouting “Start yer trotters.” In referring to strangulation, either legal or accidental, he said the vic¬ tim “choked to death like a catfish on a sand-bank.” A difficult thing to do was “harder nor climbin’ a peeled saplin’, heels uppard.” To move very swiftly was to “travel like a nigger in a thunder-storm.” And when the crisis for which he was ever waiting suddenly came he would scream “Hell’s a-snortin’,” and became a blur of arms, legs and profanity. Guided and helped by men like these the emigrant families travelled down the rivers and absorbed useful knowledge on the way. The routine of daily life on a flatboat did not differ much, except in the actual work of navigation, from that of the cabins on land. At one end of the boat was a large space often called the parlor, or sitting-room, where the travellers ate their meals and the children romped between times. It was furnished with chairs, a table, a looking-glass, and such other arti¬ cles as the women needed for their work. The kitchen was adjoining. A stove was set up there, and its pipe pro¬ jected through the roof. A narrow passageway extended down the center of the boat for a considerable part of its length. In front the hall opened into the parlor, and on each side of it were several small bedrooms. At the rear of the boat was another large compartment for the storage of provisions, furniture and agricultural im- 294 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 84.—The ark was a big, cumbersome, wide flatboat, and as built in the East sometimes had V-shaped ends. It was extensively used on the Connecticut, Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers, and later introduced on the Ohio and other interior streams. It could not prevail against a current. Arks were not roofed over, but had little houses amidship. Showing Susquehanna arks that survived until the canal period. plements, and still farther astern was the abode of the live stock. The rooms in those parts of the craft devoted to the use of the family were created, as a rule, by partitions of linsey-woolsey or chintz cloth that sometimes flared up from contact with a candle or pine knot and left no parti¬ tions at all. In more elaborate boats some rooms were divided by thin wooden walls. The enclosure for horses, pigs, chickens or other farm animals on board was sep¬ arated from the rest of the space by a barrier of planks. Such were the general arrangements of a covered Ken- tuckv boat. j The ark bore less resemblance to a land habitation in its internal arrangements. A wooden house was often 295 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA built on it near one end, 1 the farmyard was fenced in at the other, and miscellaneous non-perishable goods, such as wagons, plows and furniture were distributed through¬ out the rest of the space in order to keep an even keel. The navigation of the Ohio and “Massasip”—as the Mississippi was popularly called — presented a number of dangers to flatboats, only part of which could be avoided by intelligent precautions. From the others there was no escape except through good luck. First among the perils to which the cumbersome craft lay ex¬ posed were countless trunks of once floating trees that had become imbedded in the river bottoms, leaving their free ends pointed upward at an angle, like spikes, to stab whatever hit them. Menaces such as these were known by several names, dependent on their actions and position with relation to the surface of the water. A sunken tree moving slowly up and down with a periodic action under the influence of the current was called a “sawyer.” The moving end might extend either up stream or down, and its successive brief liftings above the surface were usu¬ ally separated by an interval of several minutes. But sometimes a log of the sort remained under water for twenty minutes before heaving upward again, and in that time a boat might easily have drifted into view of the place where it lay hid, and have reached the exact danger spot without any possible warning, only to be wrecked by running full tilt against the spear. There could be no predetermined avoidance of such a danger, and many a boat suffered catastrophe or grave damage by an accident of that nature. The vigilant boatman was always watch¬ ing for the turbulent water which gave warning of a lift- 1 Neither end of a big timber boat could properly be called the bow, for the current swung it around so that sometimes one extremity and sometimes the other would point down-stream. 296 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ing sawyer just ahead, and a dozen times a day he saved the craft entrusted to his pilotage by desperately throwing his full weight against the sweep. A sleeping sawyer was one periodically heaving up¬ ward, yet not appearing above the surface to give warning of its presence. A planter was a log so solidly fixed that it never moved. With all three sorts of obstructions an up-stream inclination of the log was of course the most feared, but was decidedly the less usual. Whenever a little flotilla of emigrant boats slowly drifted around a bend and discovered a strange boat 85.—An Ohio River ark, rectangular in shape. These were very large, and contained not only the travelling family, but its farm equipment, live stock and household goods. Arks were not safe travel vehicles until trouble with the Indians had ceased. 297 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA pinned on a planter or sawyer in the current below, the whole squadron would forthwith make for the nearest favorable spot alongshore and come to a halt. Then the men of the party tumbled into the skiffs, carrying axes, saws and other tools, and hurried out to the shipwreck. A few hours of hard work were enough in which to get the wounded boat loose and patch her up again if the damage was not severe, but it often was the case that two or three days were needed for the task. In many instances there was nothing to be done but leave the ark to its fate, and if that was the verdict of the aquatic jury its occu¬ pants and all their goods were apportioned among the rescuing armada and the lost boat would be left sticking on the fatal log like a big beetle on a needle. Mutual help for those in distress was the iron rule of the road, except for the river pirates. They were a small class of white outlaws who roamed the waters to fatten on disaster, and a limping or crippled boat was juicy prey provided it did not contain enough men or firearms to fight them off. They even attacked a moving craft at night on occasion, especially if they had reason to believe its cargo was more than usually valuable. In order to get information respecting the contents of a likely boat, the probable time of its arrival near their headquarters and the number of its male inmates, some of the river pirate gangs kept scouts at important stopping places along the rivers. The spies would obtain all desired knowledge and then hasten on ahead to their comrades below, who were lying in wait for the expected arrival. Men of such stamp were rare, and they lived but briefly after they were taken. The most notorious group of river outlaws was one with its headquarters at a point on the Ohio about twenty- 298 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA five miles below old Shawneetown, in Illinois. The town itself consisted of a few log cabins originally built by the French, standing a hundred rods back from the river and inhabited by a rough population composed of French, Indians, Spaniards, half-breeds and Americans, some of 86.—Manual labor was frequently used, and even horses and oxen were at times employed, in pulling unwieldy craft toward their destinations at the rate of four or five miles a day. whom were no doubt participants in the robber traffic. On the shore of the river at the point in question and in a little cave in a rock cliff overhanging the water, was the chief gathering place of the pirates when they were about to engage actively in the deeds of their profession. The place became known as Cave-in-Rock, and was long a spot approached with apprehension and passed with 299 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA relief. It was the habit of the pirates of Cave-in-Rock to kill those on board a richly laden boat, provided an attack on it could safely be attempted, and then send the craft on to New Orleans or some other town on the lower Missis¬ sippi in charge of a crew picked from their own number, who would dispose of its contents and return with the pro¬ ceeds. There were so many boats descending the river; so many emigrants changing their plans and voyaging to destinations other than they had at first announced; and the means of communication in the new country were so unreliable, that a boat and its occupants could easily vanish from the sight of those most interested in its wel¬ fare. When such a thing happened the disappearance was attributed to a disaster of travel, whereas it might have been due, and occasionally was procured, by a more sinister cause. 1 Other occasional perils to the flatboats were due to falling banks, floating islands, and to stationary masses of trees and driftwood called wooden islands. The banks of the rivers — especially of the Mississippi — were con¬ stantly being undermined by the currents and falling into the water in large masses, and therefore no boat guided by experienced rivermen was ever tied up for the night on the side of a stream, below a bend, which felt the full force of a swerving current. Novices in navigation who came to rest at injudicious spots were at times over¬ whelmed by tons of earth and heavy trees slipping bodily upon them from above. Every river had its well-known danger spots that were to be widely avoided or passed 1 The whole subject of brigandage on the rivers in early days is shrouded in much mystery. It did exist, but probably not to the degree that later legend has declared or even to such an extent as the travellers of the time themselves believed. Almost the only book dealing exclusively with the question is a fantastic tale entitled, “Mike Fink: A Legend of the Ohio,” by Emerson Bennett. In many respects the atmosphere and manners of the time are portrayed by it without undue exaggeration, but the incidents of the story are fanciful. 300 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 1 Names like “Sisters,” “Hog Hole,” “Sour Beer’s Eddy” and “Old Cow” carried their own story. 2 Probably in the interval between 1750 and 1755. 301 FORT ARMSTRONG . _ • - ........ . . ..■».. •- ..... .... .. ... .' .v. - - -- ■■ 87.—A sailing barge of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Swiftest means of water conveyance in the interior before the steamboat era began. Used by business men, government officials, military officers and land speculators. After a drawing by the artist, Henry Lewis. with unusual caution. They frequently received their names from accidents which had happened there, and the mention of such a place to an old boatman was sure to produce a reflective ejection of tobacco juice, followed by some unpleasant and harrowing narrative. 1 Periodic navigation of rivers by boats did not first appear in the West. That development in the history of human transportation in America took place on the Dela¬ ware some time in the second half of the eighteenth cen¬ tury. 2 Keel-boats were the type of craft originally used as regular water conveyances for the public, and the ac- A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA commodations they afforded were of very scanty extent. All they guaranteed to do was to float and move onward with whomsoever entrusted himself to that means of progress. The boats making regular trips usually started early in the morning like stage wagons, and when the time of departure was near at hand the patron 1 blew loudly on a horn to summon his intending passengers. A man who embarked for passage either carried his own blanket and rolled up in it at night 2 or else got off and 88.—The batteau was a big boat with the lines of a skiff. It was employed by those who were in a hurry, if a barge was not available. By the Philadelphia artist and wood engraver, Henry Robb. slept in some tavern or neighboring farmhouse, resuming his voyage when the horn again tooted at early dawn. At a later day the Delaware River and other eastern passen¬ ger keel-boats were transformed into barges by the addi¬ tion of house-like structures designed to furnish greater comfort and shelter. With these cabins there also ap¬ peared rude sleeping bunks, one above another, and thus developed the first germ of the future sleeping-car. But the traveller still carried his own bedding. The packet-boats of the Ohio, which furnished the 1 Captain. 2 The very earliest regular passenger keel-boats had no covered shelter. 302 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA first periodic travel facilities in the interior of the conti¬ nent, were keel-boats of twenty or thirty tons burden and came into use in the year 1794. They ran regularly thereafter between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. At the time such packets were introduced the Indians were en¬ gaged in their last effort to prevent the westward progress of the white race, 1 and real danger to defenseless boats still existed. As a consequence the packets were stoutly built and heavily armed. An understanding of their character and accommodations can best be obtained through the advertisement printed in Cincinnati 2 to announce the in¬ auguration of the service. It read: OHIO PACKET BOATS. “Two boats for the present will start from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh and return to Cincinnati in the following manner, viz.: First boat will leave Cincinnati this morning at eight o’clock, and return to Cincinnati so as to be ready to sail again in four weeks from this date. Second boat will leave Cincinnati on Saturday, the 30 th inst., and return as above, and so regularly, each boat performing the voyage to and from Cin¬ cinnati to Pittsburgh once in every four weeks. The proprietor of the^e boats having maturely considered the many inconveniences and dangers incident to the common method hitherto adopted of navigating the Ohio, and being influenced by a love of philanthropy, 3 and a desire of being serviceable to the public, has taken great pains to render the accommo¬ dations on board the boat as agreeable and convenient as they could possibly be made. No danger need be apprehended from the enemy, as every person on board will be under cover made proof to rifle balls, and convenient port holes for firing out. Each of the boats is armed with six pieces, carrying a pound ball; also a good number of muskets, and amply supplied with ammunition, strongly manned with choice men, and the master of approved knowledge. “A separate cabin from that designed for the men is partitioned off in each boat for accommodating the ladies on their passage. Conven¬ iences are constructed on board each boat, so as to render landing un¬ necessary, as it might at times be attended with danger. Rules and regulations for maintaining order on board, and for the good manage¬ ment of the boats, and a table accurately calculated for the rates of 1 In the Mississippi valley. 2 In the “Centinel” newspaper of January 11, 1794. a Quite an early appearance of that beneficent impulse as a motive for business en¬ terprise. 303 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA freightage, for passengers, and carriage of letters to and from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh; also, a table of the exact time of the arrival and departure to and from the different places on the Ohio between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh may be seen on board each boat, and at the printing office in Cincinnati. Passengers will be supplied with provisions and liquors of all kinds, of the first quality, at the most reasonable rates possible. Per¬ sons desirous of working their passage will be admitted, on finding themselves subject, however, to the same order and directions from the master of the boats as the rest of the working hands of the boat’s crew. An office of insurance will be kept at Cincinnati, Limestone, and Pitts¬ burgh, where persons desirous of having their property insured may apply. The rates of insurance will be moderate.” The armed keel-boats took about twelve days to go from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, stopping at Limestone, Marietta and a few other settlements on the way. They and the similar unarmed craft soon to follow were the best means of moving through the interior until the year 1811, and remained the only reliable up-stream convey¬ ances on the rivers until 1817. But almost all water travel beyond the Alleghany Mountains was in the oppo¬ site direction — down-stream and toward the west. Few of the immense number of emigrants who floated to the new settlements in the Northwest Territory during the first generation of the influx ever returned to the East again. They took up government land for home sites and farms, and in less than twenty years the country had been overrun. The woods of Ohio and the groves and prairies of Indiana and Illinois were in their turn dotted with log cabins; territorial and state governments laid out roads between the principal towns; Conestoga wagons and stage-coaches appeared on land routes of travel and the Ohio valley had ceased to be a frontier. New ar¬ rivals still came drifting down the river in ever increas¬ ing numbers, but they found established communities and an organized society, although it was a rough and boister¬ ous one. 304 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA A short time after western river towns sprang into existence the flatboat demonstrated its versatility in a new way. Having served as a travel vehicle, a domicile, a fort and a barnyard, it finally appeared as a retail busi¬ ness establishment stocked with dry-goods, crockery, bon¬ nets, paint, cutlery, real boots and shoes, ready-made clothing, big colored handkerchiefs, tinware and all those other notions, fabrics and household articles then to be found in the small dry-goods, hardware and general stores of the East. There was a lack of such useful things in the earliest days of the river settlements, and a shrewd trader who fitted up his flatboat in the semblance of a 305 ARTIST'S ENCAMPMENT. P£S KUNSTtERS fCLDlAGtR, S9.—Boat used by the artist, Henry Lewis, during his trip down the Mississippi. The superstructure was erected on a platform which in turn rested on two large canoes. This type of boat combined cheapness, swiftness, safety, a considerable carrying capacity and a minimum of labor in its navigation. From a drawing by Lewis. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA rural dry-goods shop and filled it with appropriate mer¬ chandise received an enthusiastic welcome. Formalities worthy of such an important event were observed in the approach of a trading boat to a newly established community. When within a short distance of his anchorage the Admiral of the department store mounted to the roof, and, striking a posture in which dignity and philanthropy were judiciously mingled, he announced his presence by repeated blasts on the familiar tin horn. It was a sound that by common agreement sig¬ nified either the arrival of news or an important occur¬ rence of some sort, and was sure to bring to the landing place a group that would scatter information of the arrival. Forthwith all the women folk of the little hamlet dropped their other affairs and hurried to the boat to enjoy again the almost forgotten delights of shopping, comparing patterns and buying the things they needed. A store-boat was fitted with shelves for the goods and counters for their display. The indefinable aroma of fresh, clean fabrics filled its creaking cabin, and the dig¬ nified Admiral of half an hour before, transformed into a smiling merchant with a huge pair of shears, snipped his calicoes, bargained with customers and told them the doings of the outside world. After he had accumulated all the money the population had on hand he once more assumed his nautical rank, blew a farewell blast and dis¬ appeared down the river. The floating merchant of the Northwest Territory tried to collect in his craft the stand¬ ard articles ordinarily sold in half a dozen kinds of retail shops, and such an enterprise was the progenitor of to¬ day’s universal emporium. All long-distance travel on the interior streams was performed with almost incredible slowness until the gen- 306 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 90.—Sunken trees were the most serious natural menace to travel on interior rivers during the flatboat age. Those hidden by the water were most dangerous of all. From a sketch by Lewis. eral introduction of steamboats . 1 The whole region lying between Pittsburgh and Louisville was broadly known as the Upper Country, and the big barges that regularly moved from either of those towns or Cincinnati to the Lower Country—which was the southern Mississippi district — made one round trip a year. That was the length of time it took to go from the Ohio towns to New Orleans and back again in a barge which also carried freight . 2 By swifter and smaller keel-boats the time could be cut in half . 3 The down-stream journey was made in six weeks, and four and a half months were sufficient 1 Which did not take place until 1817 in that part of the country. 2 According to the statement of Morgan Neville, an early writer familiar with river travel, and many others. Neville’s story of conditions in the pioneer days was written in 1829, and is to be found in “The West; Its Commerce and Navigation,” by Hall: p. 130. 3 Burnet’s “Notes on the Settlement of the Northwest Territory.” 307 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA in which to return. It required about a month to go from Louisville to Pittsburgh by keel-boat unless unusual effort was made. 1 A freight and passenger barge was three months on the same trip. 2 In the year 1817, just before the general introduction of steamboats, the whole passenger and freight traffic of the Ohio River was handled by twenty barges of a hundred tons each, and a hundred and fifty keel-boats of about thirty tons displacement. 3 These were the regular craft of the river. Their work had no relation to the travel tide of the emigrants, which proceeded as usual by means of the thousands of flatboats and arks that drifted down-stream every year. The long reign of the clumsy timber boats did not abruptly end in western waters with the appearance of the steamboat there. It continued for some time even after steam was harnessed for river traffic, and did not entirely disappear until close to the year 1850. A few figures collected at St. Louis during the decade beginning with 1841 indicate the end of the period in which the many types of hand-power boats did so much toward peopling the Mississippi valley and in transporting its settlers and their goods. The statistics in question recorded the ar¬ rivals at St. Louis from the upper Mississippi, and showed the following facts : 4 Steamboats Keel-boats Arrivals in 1841. . 143 108 Arrivals in 1842. . 195 88 Arrivals in 1843. . 244 55 Arrivals in 1845. . 647 Not reported Arrivals in 1846. . 663 Not reported Corresponding conditions would doubtless be revealed by similar tabulations made at other river towns if they 1 Neville’s narrative: “Hall”; p. 130. 2 Ibid: p. 130. 3 Ibid: p. 130. 4 The figures are from Hall’s “The West; Its Commerce and Navigation”: p. 97. 308 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA were available. The day of the flatboat and keel-boat and ark was done. They were vehicles of an archaic time devised for a work which could not have been per¬ formed without them, and by their necessary aid hundreds of thousands of square miles came under the sway of the white race. 1 Although the conquest in which they played the vital part took place only a little while ago, the condi¬ tions of society that then prevailed — so swift has later development been — seem to be separated from modern life by an interval of a thousand years. If by a fortunate chance one of the old-time covered flatboats is ever ex¬ humed in its completeness of form and furnishings from a river bed, no other relic of the period will command more interest than the floating cabin in which some back- woods American family of the eighteenth century made the water pilgrimage into the West. 1 Among the states affected directly or indirectly by the river migrations, and that received much of their early population through journeys performed in whole or in part on the interior rivers are Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana* Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin. CHAPTER XVIII INTERIOR NEW YORK RE-OCCUPIED—HOW FENIMORE COOPER ACQUIRED HIS LOVE OF THE WILDERNESS—TALLY- RAND TELLS WHY HE LAUGHED—THE BALTIMORE AND GENESSEE STEAM PACKET—A WATER ROUTE TO THE WEST—ADVENTURES OF MICHAUX, CUMING AND SCHULTZ—THE MAN FROM ST. LOUIS—A VIEW OF TRAVEL CONDITIONS AS THEY EXISTED JUST BEFORE THE EPOCH OF MECHANICAL VEHICLES HE principal overland travel development in the eastern states during the early years of the flatboat era 1 in the West was one by which northern Pennsylvania and the interior of New York were re-peopled by the whites and permanently occupied. During the advance in question the Susquehanna River—as will be understood from what has already been said—played an important part. The long struggle with England, together with the frontier Indian warfare included in it, had driven all white inhabitants out of the country, and the few roads they had hewed through the woods with so much labor were overgrown and disappeared. There was no idea in the mind of the people when the war with England ended but that all future conveniences of travel and transportation through the country would have to be created by the improvement of methods al¬ ready known. The chief reliance of those who gave 1 From 1787 to about 1805. 310 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA serious consideration to the question was placed in a greater usage of natural waterways and the building of roads or canals to connect them. And in mentally sur¬ veying the map of the country it was believed that the region so long controlled by the Iroquois was destined to take an important position in the growth of future na¬ tional communication facilities. General Washington was one of those to whom central New York presented oppor¬ tunities of value, and in the year of 1783 he ascended the Mohawk River, from which stream he travelled overland to the head waters of the Susquehanna in order to study the problem himself, and to reflect in what man¬ ner the people might most easily move themselves and 311 91.—More steamboats invented. A broadside view of the Baltimore and Genessee Packet. Like the two deck plans of the same vessel shown in colored plates, it is done in India ink and colors on a large folio sheet and reveals the lines of a trim-looking vessel. Original drawing of an unknown American inventor, about 1801-1803. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA their effects into the new lands soon to come under American control. “Prompted by these actual observations,” he said in a letter describing the journey, 1 “I could not help taking more comprehensive and extensive views of the vast in¬ land navigation of these United States, from maps and the information of others, and could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence which has dealt her favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them.” 2 Although the Revolution had postponed the overrun¬ ning of interior New York and Pennsylvania, it resulted in the advance of a large number of people to those dis¬ tricts after the struggle was ended. Many men from New England and lower Pennsylvania had moved through the regions with Arnold, Sullivan, Clinton and other generals, and had observed the pleasant nature of the country. On their return to their homes after the war they spread a knowledge of what they had seen, and in that way the emigration was given its new impetus. Settlers who had been driven out also prepared to return. The ensuing stampede assumed large proportions in the year of 1785, and grew steadily bigger for years there¬ after. Those who moved into interior New York from the lower part of the state and from New Jersey made their way up the Hudson in sailing boats and thence pushed farther inland along the Mohawk River in batteaux, carrying their worldly possessions with them. Pennsylvania people destined for the same country or for the northern sections of their own state went up the 1 Written to the Marquis de Chastelleux. 2 Within two years from the writing of the wish so earnestly expressed in this letter, Fitch laid his plan for steam navigation before the General, who rejected it. 312 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA 92.—Oliver Evans’ steamboat of 1804, built at Philadelphia for use as a river dredge. It was not a land locomotive. He placed wheels under the hull and ran it through the streets to demonstrate that steam vehicles could be run on land as well as on water. Susquehanna in the way others had done years before. New England emigrants marched overland along the existing trails and roads. The condition of the present beautiful, fertile and densely populated interior of New York state, as it ap¬ peared in 1785, has been preserved in letters written by one of the earliest pioneers who journeyed into that lonesome part of the country after the years of warfare had ceased. 1 The writer says: “In 1785 I visited the rough and hilly country of Otsego, where there existed not an inhabitant nor any trace of a road. I was alone, 300 miles from home, without bread, meat, or food of any kind. Fire and fishing tackle were my only means of subsistence. I caught trout in the brook and roasted them in the ashes. 1 William Cooper, father of the novelist, James Fenimore Cooper. His letters were gathered together in a little volume published in Dublin in 1810 under the title: “A Guide to the Wilderness: Letters to William Sampson.” 313 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA My horse fed on the grass that grew by the edge of the waters. I laid me down to sleep in my watch-coat, noth¬ ing but the melancholy wilderness around me. In this way I explored the country, formed my plans of future settlement, and meditated upon the spot where a place of trade or a village should afterward be established.” 1 After his first trip, here mentioned, William Cooper returned home and organized a party to proceed to the district he had explored and settle there. Later letters describe the journey of the overland emigrants. “Not one in 20 had a horse,” he declares. “The way lay through rapid streams, across swamps, or over bogs. They had neither provisions to take with them nor money to purchase them; nor if they had, were any to be found on the way.” The travellers got their food in the country they traversed, as the narrator himself had done, by hunting and fishing. After the party had reached the selected spot they built themselves cabin homes and set about raising crops and opening the country. Cooper also tells of the people’s trouble in establishing roads by which they might get into touch with the outside world. In the first year or two they found winter to be the best time for their journeys, and the writer goes on to say, “they travelled sometimes by partial roads in sleighs and sometimes over the ice. ... I had not funds of my own sufficient for the opening of new roads, but I collected the people at convenient seasons, and by joint efforts we were able to throw bridges over the deep streams, and to make, in the cheapest manner, such roads as suited our then humble purposes.” Similar pioneer work was going on during the same years along the shores of numer- 1 William Cooper’s letters reveal in what manner his more famous but perhaps not more gifted son acquired his love of the wilderness and the excellence with which he de¬ scribed its features. 314 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA ous other streams and lakes in New York state, and in that way the forest was gradually penetrated by many paths which in time connected the different settlements and linked them with the older communities toward the east and south. Yet the process of creating easy and rapid communica¬ tion throughout all the extensive region that lay between the Hudson and the Ohio, and extended from Philadel¬ phia on the south to Lakes Erie and Ontario was a very slow one. Until about the year 1800 the only established and frequented travel routes in it were the Mohawk and Susquehanna Rivers, the road extending westward SCEEW PBOPELLEB, BEING- THE FIRST FEBEY-BOAT BUN FROM HOBOKEN TO NEW YOBK—BUILT BY JOHN STEYENS, 1804. . ~ -- - >...... —— ------ 93.—John Stevens’ screw propeller steamboat of 1804. Stevens had undertaken the building of steamboats as a result of Fitch’s work. He and his friends used the craft in New York Bay and cn the Hudson River, but it was not intended as a public ferry. The machinery, in a reconstructed hull, is in possession of the Stevens Institute. 315 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA * through the southern part of Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh, and the trail stretching from the Hudson at Catskill to the upper Susquehanna. At the commencement of the nine¬ teenth century scarcely an impression had been made on the all-pervading woods in the territory here defined, nor had there been appreciable decrease in the difficulty with which a journey through them was accomplished. The people still moved about on horseback or their own legs, drifted with the currents of the rivers or pushed them¬ selves up-stream in the same old way. Ten years after William Cooper first penetrated to Otsego Lake, the Genessee region of New York state was visited by the Frenchman Talleyrand, 1 who later penned a description of his trip. 2 His narrative discloses the impression which American backwoods life and travel made on a man ac¬ customed to all the conveniences civilization could then afford. “I was struck with astonishment,” the foreign visitor wrote. “At less than 154 miles distance from the capital 3 all trace of men’s presence disappeared. Nature, in all her primeval vigor, confronted us; forests as old as the world itself; decayed plants and trees covering the very ground where they once grew in luxuriance; thick and intricate bushes that often barred our progress. In the face of these immense solitudes we gave free vent to our imaginations; our minds built cities, villages and hamlets. . . . To be riding through a large wild forest, to lose one’s way in it in the middle of the night, and to call to one’s companion in order to ascertain that you are not missing each other; all this gives impressions im- 1 Then residing in America because of inclement political conditions at home. 2 In his “Memoirs.” Talleyrand went northward from Philadelphia on horseback with a friend, and returned down the Susquehanna in a batteau. a Philadelphia was then the capital. 316 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA possible to define. . . . When I cried, ‘So-and-so, are you here,’ and my companion replied, ‘Unfortunately I am, my Lord,’ I could not help laughing.” The trouble experienced by the people of interior New York in establishing an easy route to the outside world resulted in again bringing forward a plan for applying steam to river navigation. Though the inven¬ tor of the Baltimore and Genessee Packet is unknown, his plans and written proposal still remain, and serve to emphasize the many gaps to be filled before a complete chronicle of the earlier days is available. The drawings of the nameless inventor are reproduced in this narrative. They show a paddle-wheel steamboat identical in its essential characteristics with the steam river vessels destined later to come into general use. Cer¬ tain features of the drawings and of the written statements accompanying them fix the date of the invention sometime between the years 1801 and 1806, inclusive. 1 The dimensions of the boat as given on one of the plans are “80 feet long 22 feet wide and Zy 2 deep or 4 feet.” The paddles are stated to be “18 inches deep and 2]/ 2 [feet] broad—8 of them if possible.” The rear part of the boat, says the inventor, is occupied by the stern sheets, “in which it is to be hoped many a passenger will be lodged and under these broad seats lockers where much cold provisions may be kept for the passengers for there must be no cooking on board.” Immediately beneath the broadside view of the vessel are the words: “This being the first Steam packet, 2 we will call her the lady of the lake or Washington or the Genessee and Baltimore 1 Probably between 1801 and 1803. The history and condition of the Genesee country between the same years is a further indication that this vessel was designed within the period named. No earlier plans of any steamboat can at present be traced, though it is possible that prior drawings exist. Fitch’s drawings have disappeared. 2 The inventor had seemingly never heard of Fitch’s boat of 1788-90. 317 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Packet.” On the same drawing the inventor has written, “Passengers in abundance ... all for Genessee,” and in another part of the broadside view he refers to the for¬ ward flag as “a Packet signal of 13 stripes, the true good old standard of 76 the origin and foundation of all our happiness and independence—it is hoisted occasionally only and as a signal and lure for passengers.” On the sheet containing an amended deck plan the projector has written in pencil a plea in support of his steamboat in which he refers to it as “my discovery and contrivance,” 1 and discusses the purposes for which it is to be used. Enough of his statement is decipherable to show the craft was intended to ply from Baltimore to a point as far up the Susquehanna as it could reach, and that he was submitting the plans to a number of other men for their endorsement as a practical improvement in travel vehicles. The still readable parts of the written appeal are quoted. 2 Unidentified though the inventor 1 Another indication that he had never heard of Fitch. Had he known of the exten¬ sive use of a steamboat on the Delaware, years before, it is rot likely he would have claimed the invention of it for himself when laying these drawings before other men in an effort to secure approval of his proposition. 2 Topmost inscription on Deck Plan No. 2. Line arrangement as in the original manuscript of the inventor. Undecipherable words indicated by dots, thus: . Faint but apparent readings in parenthesis. Line: 1.—108 2. —Set up end ways (in the) 3. —. 4. —I suppose 50 more might be 5. —put length ways upon the 6. —top of the others and in the 7. —forcastle about 50 (more) end up 8. —and about 30 lengthways but 9. —there is no good (unless). 10. —untill she is loaded & then 11. —we shall see how far she 12. —sinks in the water . . . (and how) 13. —deep the (water) .... (Generally) is 14. —and those.to ... . 15. —load largely (upon) . . . how . . . 16. —lower that. 17. — (less) than a boat built 18. —of th ; s size by way of 19. —experiment which 20. —might be.(doubt) 21. —&.run as a packet up 22. —(or) in (exploring) to Genesee .... 23. —& on .up the 24. —small rivers branching 25. — (into) the Susquehanna to 318 I O..’ .-/ 4 o ■' A, •• • • V-rArA • <*->& „ it. ‘A;. •>.*- /<-• rtx <. y>» •#.< * v*'*'* *«'* jC^/ 61 L '■■ ' _V, &/—* ;:. :: .A. ..•;/•••'• • ' •./ c ■*■&>*• r < > #*•« ,, 4 ' <>▼*•». t«*V iW /«? > x fu. \$ <. *» »•*- ?/( < t- t <■ >v»* <“ A. 4 *V «>V • . / 6 A. 4.- f.ffc f - 7 ,<. .MHIOi-i *<»>< /«*>*.♦ *»>**.* A 7 . , V <••' / a ! * < < <#A * ‘ ^ tfJuvi >•.*<■/■..»«< x/lfi P<> >*' 1 * • *■ •■ i \ M t /;*•'/'< ••>''' jx-fiw** »>•({“ u, fV , y . >'/'■ H «/r>/.>r| ? r- ,4 vi bt ;,o <£,;k. i >••«'-"' • _.. Ac A A, (!&■ <« ‘ ,' ..,»/» .... 4y„r A'.V 4 ;'r.-..,./.'r- , • r^/rr «• / < 4 -»‘i I A JM<»V - iH ' , ' ; 'V 4/U' inf is-/ -A-'iH’»' “ A ; , d$'"<>p isi , tu *p f it**" “VfTL^Zi /C;», r 7 a /; »■ ftt ' s t| ;•/ * 7 ' vX c *AX * * ; V« «««■*«*2^**- ^ ./5C? ■;*?»« AVI w«W A ..J( - ,4./ ./ <5«... y.i„0 4 vJ|k ^ i '"^ v- fis sK* r /*<0' {X*-t .4 .>< ••■* r *r*»t '"'t§x r *J fi . H< ' V f ”*' -* <*'"* *f 3- <>'-■* **<■'**** ,9x< V* f/ l' X: t'*> i£> fha 'oitnJ* ./«, ,4- .4 * X. vt /.4f Vl 0 ^ AvJ A C . . - <1 A >' A '/« }'. 4 .<;> 7-r /(; i'y ><» — fo* ' cyS f First deck plan of the “Baltimore and Genesee Steam Packet.” Original draw¬ ing for an early American side-wheel steamboat designed to run from Balti¬ more up the Susquehanna river to the newly settled Genesee Country. The inventor is unknown. Date of sketch probably about 1801 - 1803 . Drawing in India ink and colors on a large folio sheet, with specifications and descrip¬ tion in marginal manuscript. Amer. r J Second and revised deck-plan of the “Baltimore and Genesee Steam Packet.” The inventor has modified the lines of the forward part of the hull to get greater speed. The indicated dimensions are 70 feet length, 23 feet width, and 4 x /z feet depth of hold. Each paddle wheel to have eight blades. The faint marginal notes on this plan, so far as decipherable, are quoted elsewhere. Drawing in India ink and colors ^ a large folio sheet. Date, about 1801 - 1803 . Amer. A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA of this steamboat is, his drawings and words reveal an¬ other of the early and forgotten efforts made to overcome an age-long handicap under which the people so labori¬ ously struggled. The state government of New York began to display some interest in the question of better highways about the year 1790, and took control of the road leading from the Hudson toward the Susquehanna. In 1792 a party of travellers passing over it from Connecticut required but eight days to cover the distance between the two rivers, although they were driving live stock with them. The highway was then twenty-five feet wide. In 1792 a weekly 26. —.(but what) such (boats) 27. —could do (& they) 28. —.certainly (go) Another statement on Plan No. 2 reads: Line: 1.—in this plan I have lengthened the 2—forecastle part, taking in about a 3. —third part of the whole into nearly 4. —a triangle, believing that 5. —such a form would more rapidly 6. —force up stream against current .... downward 7. —which is the great desideratum Inscription in center of Deck Plan No. 2 at bottom of the sheet. Line: 1. —Cuts great economy both in time and money 2. — ... (I hope) . . . make this trip . . . any other system & (there) 3. — . . . very . . . are.(of) Baltimore up into the upper part 4. — (of Susquehanna) .... safely.is also worth 5. —.and safe against all . . . 6. — (to land).the 7. —.I will be. 8 . —. Inscription in lower right corner of Deck Plan No. 2. Line: 1. — (I) would be satisfied.(up to a great) 2. —deal (particularly) in carrying. 3. —of (every) kind. 4. — . . . and rapid (rivers) of that.a. 6.—and easy conveyance. 6. —well Gentlemen this is all ... . suppose 7. —that my discovery and contrivance answers 8. —all my.(say it) suggests .... 9. — (which possibly) may. 10. —.(and when saved) .... (you) 11. —most (sanguine &) enthusiastic. 12. — (too often).only & 13. —nothing else.it may be (sent) 14. —.(can with them). 15. —However .... Gentlemen judge for your 16. —selves. 17. —.A great (mind) I should. There is nothing known to show how the gentlemen judged. Three sheets of worn paper and some faintly written words are apparently all that remain of the eighth or ninth effort to introduce steamboats in America. A complete list of all early attempts of the sort will be found in a later chapter. 319 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA- mail route was established over the thoroughfare, and from that time onward it constantly increased in im¬ portance. Later it was rebuilt with a surface of stone and gravel and became known as the Catskill Turnpike. The history of this road typified the last stages in the development of all similar highways by which they were 94.—Stevens’ twin-screw propeller of 1805. Used by the builder as his former vessel had been. Both it and the 1804 boat attained speeds of from five to seven miles an hour. Machinery in possession of the Stevens Institute. *» finally transformed from red men’s trails into white men’s routes of travel. By the year 1800 a country-wide demand for good turnpikes was manifest. So many proposals for work of the character were introduced in every legislature that it became evident the states themselves could not undertake general highway construction. They were too poor, and A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA yet were confronted by an urgent need of public utilities demanding an outlay of millions of dollars. 1 When the method of successful turnpike construction was found, the outcry redoubled. A new generation had grown up since the Revolution, and was fast assuming control of all those matters—except national politics—that con¬ cerned the mass of the people. Its members were anxious to improve their material welfare and the conditions un¬ der which they transacted their affairs of every sort. They lived in the present and future; not in the past. Looking backward had begun to go out of fashion. Whenever an improvement of any kind was proposed they considered it on its merits, no matter to what it related, and accepted or rejected it in accordance with their best opinion and limited experience. They believed their country was already the most wonderful nation on earth, and showed much irritation when they found any one who entertained doubt on the question. The new generation of Americans was alert of mind, quick to see opportunities, eager to move ahead toward wealth and power, and prompt to invest its substance in any enterprise offering advantage to the public and gain to itself. Out of these new qualities of public thought came a suggestion that the task of turnpike building be turned over to private companies created for the purpose. The idea was adopted through all the country. Under its general operation many thousands of miles of improved roads were constructed, and within a few years it was possible to travel by stage-coach from the Atlantic Coast to the border of Indiana in about two weeks, at a cost of only forty-five or fifty dollars exclusive of board and 1 Some states passed laws under which lotteries wer£ organized, and the proceeds from the sale of tickets, after the prize money had been deducted, were devoted to the improvement of roads and the building of bridges. 321 A HISiORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA lodging. But in order to make the journey in such quick time the traveller had to keep going sixteen hours of every twenty-four and escape accident on the way. His total expenses for the trip were usually about sixty-five dollars. 1 The companies organized to build new roads or im¬ prove old ones were given authority by the states in which they operated to charge the public for use of the highways so made, and in that manner the toll system was estab¬ lished. Toll-gates sprang up like mushrooms, and the driver of any sort of vehicle was stopped every four or five miles—often more frequently—to pay for the privi¬ lege of going farther. The practise of laying out wagon roads by private enterprise and of maintaining them un¬ der corporate management remained in operation for a long period. 2 The new public attitude toward questions relating to the advancement of the country was a most important feature of the time. Men commenced to fret at the ob¬ stacles to communication so long accepted as a necessary part of their surroundings. News came back from the western country of the immensity of the lately settled re¬ gion and its possibilities as a home, a producing section and a market for many commodities. Little groups as¬ sembled to talk of such things. The mental horizon of the people expanded enormouslv. and the shadow of their future power fell upon them. It was prescience, more than vainglory, which impelled the people to 1 No one stage-coach company or proprietor in the East ever had facilities to carry people any such distance. Usually a stage company ran its vehicles for a day’s journey each way from its headquarters. Passengers were then transferred to the vehicles of another proprietor. Often there existed a sort of traffic arrangement whereby the coach of one owner awaited the arrival of another. West of Wheeling, in the earliest days, stage wagons were used before regular stage-coaches appeared. The average fare paid! by a traveller on a journey to the West was abo it five cents a mile. 2 Many of the toll road franchises have only lapsed in recent years, and a few are still effective. Maryland, and perhaps other states, yet possess toll-gates. Not until' after the Civil War did the various commonwealths generally adopt a policy under which roadways were considered public works to be created and maintained by the people them¬ selves and used without toll fees. 322 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA BRIDGE AND TURNPIKE LOTTERY 'ig'Ss. ‘ TIUS’YLIiet will emul* the Possessor t<> suchPRIZR as shr.l! be drawn to its Number, in LOTTiypr {■ ^V*KO. Y.j authorised by an act of the Legishmiw, L’ths same u Joji landed within sis. months after the concision fyA^>tlraw uig. Subject to a deduction of 15 per cent. Commissioner, [WUfcj • Charleston. (S. C ) April, 95.—Soon after the year 1800 a general demand for better roads arose. Some of the states, instead of appropriating money or levying taxes directly for the purpose, fostered a widespread gambling mania by organizing and conducting “Bridge and Turnpike Lotteries” to secure the needed funds. Lotteries were very popular. Churches were occasionally erected by their aid. proclaim so boastfully the might that did not yet exist. As a consequence of political and social developments then taking place, it became the custom, soon after 1800, for many men of the old states to make extensive excur- sions through all the country east of the Mississippi in order to see for themselves the new conditions and judge in what manner the nation as a whole was likely to be affected by them. Numerous foreign visitors, similarly interested in the subject, came to studv at first hand the situation created bv the birth and expansion of a common¬ wealth so favorably endowed. On their return to the East or to Europe the investigators were overwhelmed by demands for precise information regarding what they had seen and how they had got about through the outlying territories. Such inquiries and the widespread interest revealed through them led to the writing of a number of books by men who had journeyed in the interior, and their narratives are the chief sources of present knowledge concerning American life and manners during the first decade of the last century. Among the individuals who undertook such explorations and whose stories of wan- 323 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA derings are highly esteemed were Fortesque Cuming, 1 Christopher Schultz 2 and F. A. Michaux. 3 A capitula¬ tion of some of the incidents told by those chroniclers 4 will reveal the travel conditions prevailing just before the beginning of the modern epoch of scientific, machine- driven vehicles. Michaux comments on the new quality that had come so prominently into the national life with the generation after the Revolution. “There prevails in the United States,” he declares, “a degree of public spirit which in¬ duces individuals to adopt any project that may tend to enrich the country by agriculture and commerce.” He began his journey from Charleston, in South Carolina, and indicates that almost all travel between the South and North was then undertaken by way of the sea in sailing vessels “tastefully fitted up and conveniently ar¬ ranged for the reception of passengers.” The usual time consumed in the trip to New York was ten days, and the charge was forty or fifty dollars. From New York he went to Philadelphia in a stage-coach. A day or more was still required to move between the two cities, and a seat cost five dollars. At the inns he paid half a dollar for breakfast, a dollar for dinner and half a dollar for supper. The stage driver also got fifty cents from each passenger, the giving of which seemed to be customary. Leaving Philadelphia the traveller set out for Pitts¬ burgh, where he thought his voyage down the Ohio was 1 Cuming- was an Englishman of culture and wide experience in many countries. Hi$ book, “Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country,” was printed in Pittsburgh in 181D. Cuming began his journey in 1807 and moved about for two years or more. . 2 Schultz’ narrative is called “Travels on an Inland Voyage,” and describes the country in 1807-8. 3 Michaux was a French physician and scientist. His “Travels to the Westward of the Alleghany Mountains” was issued in Paris and republished in England in 1805. Michaux’ trip was made in 1802. 4 Like all travellers they made some mistakes, but they were observers without extreme bias and their descriptions of .the country and statements of personal experiences are generally trustworthy. The principal errors in their narratives have to do with dates in antecedent American history. Cuming makes several mistakes of that nature. 324 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA to begin, and got as far as Shippensburg by regular lines of stage-coaches. The distance thus covered was a hun¬ dred and forty miles. “From Shippensburg to Pitts¬ burgh,” Michaux goes on to say, “the distance is 170 miles; and the stages not going farther, you are obliged to 96.—Robert Fulton begins his building of steamboats in America. His first successful vessel, the Clermont, as she appeared in 1807. No authenticated contemporary picture of the craft is known. The one here shown is probably the most reliable, and was done from personal recollection by Richard Varick De Witt, in 1858. The original drawing, from which this is a photograph, belongs to the New York Historical Society. The next four illustrations are also of Fulton’s work. perform the rest of the journey on foot, or to purchase a horse, of which there are always many for sale; but the country people are such cheats that they always make you pay double the value for them; and on arriving at Pittsburgh you are obliged to dispose of them for half what they cost. I was inclined, from motives of economy, to travel the rest of the way on foot, but from some re¬ marks which were made to me, I thought proper to join with an American officer who had travelled with me in the stage, and was likewise going to Pittsburgh; we there¬ fore bought a horse between us, on which we rode thither by turns.” He reached Pittsburgh nine days after leaving 325 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA Philadelphia, only three days of the interval having been spent in stages. His average speed over the whole dis¬ tance was not quite thirty-five miles a day. Michaux changed his plans on arriving at Pittsburgh and walked to Wheeling, in Virginia, a town of twenty- six houses. There he bought a log canoe twenty-four feet long, eighteen inches wide and equally deep, and with a companion picked up on the way, started down the Ohio River. “We covered our canoe for one-quarter of its length,” he says, “with a piece of canvas stretched on two hoops. 1 In less than three-quarters of an hour all our arrangements were made for continuing our voyage. . . . We left Wheeling at six o’clock in the evening. We made twelve miles that evening, and stopped for the night on the right bank of the Ohio. . . . Although we had ad¬ vanced only twelve miles we were, nevertheless, fatigued, less from paddling continually than from remaining con¬ stantly in a sitting posture, with extended legs. Our canoe, the bottom of which was very narrow, compelled us to keep that position: the slightest motion would have exposed us to upset. At the expiration of a few days custom caused these inconveniences to disappear, and we proceeded on our journey with comparative ease and comfort. . . . Our second day’s progress was 30 miles; the third, 40. . . .” The two men frequently fell in with all the various species of craft so numerous on the river, and Michaux’s first vision of an emigrant flatboat is described in the following words: “I could not conceive what such large square boxes could be, which seemed abandoned to the current, pre¬ senting alternately their ends, their sides, and even their 1 As a protection against the sun. It was July, and very warm. 326 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA angles. As they 1 advanced I heard a confused noise, with¬ out distinguishing anything, on account of the height of the sides. On ascending the banks of the river I per¬ ceived in these boats several families, bringing with them their horses, cows, fowls, carts, ploughs, harness, beds, in¬ struments of husbandry; in short, all the furniture requisite for house-keeping, agriculture, and the manage¬ ment of a farm. These people had thus abandoned them¬ selves to the water for several hundred miles, probably without knowing where they might stop, to exercise their industry and to enjoy in peace the fruit of their labors.” Many references to the appearance of the country are contained in the relation of the trip. When about thirty- six miles above Marietta, as an example, the narrator measured a plane tree 2 forty-seven feet in circumference at a distance of four feet above the ground, and whose girth was maintained practically undiminished “to a height of fifteen or twenty feet.” In commenting on the monster vegetable, Michaux goes on to say: “Our host informed us that if we would pass the day with him he would show us trees of equal size in other parts of the wood.” Thus the voyagers drifted along for ten days until they reached Limestone, in Kentucky. They had come only three hundred and forty-eight miles, “during which,” Michaux says, “we were obliged to paddle incessantly.” The slowness of his progress decided him to quit the river at Limestone, and leaving his companion to continue on alone, he struck off overland on the road to Lexington. The distance was sixty-five miles, and he got there in two days and a half. At Lexington he bought another horse 1 It was apparently a fleet of five or six boats only partly roofed over; a combination of flatboat and,ark. 2 Platanus 'occidentals. 327 A HISTORY OF TRAVEL IN AMERICA without commenting on the transaction, and proceeded southward along the road to Nashville, in Tennessee, at the rate of nearly thirty miles a day. From Nashville, which settlement he left on September 5th, Michaux travelled eastward along an old wilderness road and ' /'V .< ?':/ ?>><>< < r .'«•// *. •*>< / 't/■ frjt: '.Y /i vrr'*’ /. .*> (.>'<#■ (''c.W-i . {//// . /i/>>ft . S / y t?.-* ><* * /< /"&/* < .4 ■ > > ■ ■ /}(/ //.a! f . ' ■' • - V /5 ///#> ’ Sno^orft -ffUloth'aL 'iomh/ , //'*,> i/ 'X* <4 /■: v,, 0 ., ,',.//>% /'■ /...*■ ■ ‘ c > // / //v (Sr .'Jr / firi /!'/ f f/tf f< : - -- «,V r>-s£/>?//* <,/ ('// ((Hi'/?/ // •• - # .0 7 7 l/. / BOSTON COLLEGE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION LIBRARY CHESTNUT HILL 67, MASS. Books may be kept for two weeks and may be renewed for the same period, unless re¬ served. Five cents a day is charged for each book kept overtime. If you cannot find what you want, ask the Librarian who will be glad to help you. The borrower is responsible for books drawn on his card and for all fines accruing on the same. OCMCO