Transportation on the rivers still continued to be chiefly by flatboats, keelboats and barges, of rude and cheap construction, floated down by the current and propelled against it from below by the stout and muscular arms of hardy men. They were often of large size, containing one or more families with their household goods, farm implements, stock and more or less provisions if they were going to the backwoods. These family boats were of all sizes, and made the great water highway an enlivening spectacle. But multitudes of flatboats were loaded with farm produce, which was taken down to New Orleans for sale, the boats there broken up for lumber, and the crews journeyed back by lighter boats, by land, or, in the later years, by steamboat. These flatboats continued to be in use until the days of railways, notwithstanding the multiplication of steamboats. They were cheap, grain and other produce from the upper Valley was low in price and time was not so valuable to men then as now. They counted many thousands almost up to 1850.

This gave rise to a class of boatmen for whom a rude life had attractions, who were often boisterously rough and sometimes criminally violent, among the quiet river towns; but usually they were so under the influence of careless merriment rather than malice. Boisterous joke, and jest, and song echoed from the river banks from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. It was the unpolished, but free and essentially just and manly, opening of a new phase of human experience-a new nation was displaying the lusty vigor of its youth and developing, in unrestrained and uncultured fullness, the leading characteristics of the future in the generous and smiling Valley.

The efforts and expenditures of the General Government, of States, and of private wealth and enterprise gradually ameliorated the difficulties of the primitive times of settlement. But at the close of the war, forty years after the strong commencement of the stream of immigration had fully settled the fact that the West was to be immediately

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occupied by Anglo-Americans, the life of the people was still that of pioneers, buried in the heart of the continent. In 1816 there were no markets to speak of but those supplied by the people themselves and the vast immigration. Luxury and elegance were to be found, to some extent, in the towns where outside wealth had surmounted all difficulties, and ingenious skill had created comfort in a still wider circle; but among the people at large the early difficulties still remained. Food was abundant and the more substantial requirements of life were nowhere lacking. A primitive simplicity and heartiness reigned. Kentucky and Tennessee, as the longest settled, the most inured to deprivation of the thousand accessories of prosperous social life in older countries, furnish the strongest picture. All that grain and vegetables, the game of the forests and the herds, flocks and poultry yards could furnish, were enjoyed in unlimited abundance. To these add fish from the streams, the products of the dairy, wild and cultivated fruit, with maple or New Orleans sugar as a rarity, and the kitchen may be considered richly supplied with the healthiest and the best materials for the table. No necessities of economy restrained hospitality; a frank, cheerful and independent spirit had largely abolished the idea of social distinctions except between the white and the black; the difficulties of beginnings were past and the situation did not yet permit much opportunity of large acquisitions from agriculture. Therefore there was little to check social intercourse, there was leisure, abundance, and general sympathy to promote it.

The social habits of the times were unrivaled, perhaps, in any time or place, for geniality and heartiness. This was a general tone through all the Valley, varied north of the Ohio by the more thrifty and provident habits of the New England settlers, whom, yet, the peculiar circumstances inclined to greater openness of heart and hand than accorded with their ordinary habit. Dangers, privations, hopes and plenty shared together, while yet the elements of society were unclassified,

produced singularly pleasant intercourse. This was often intensified by its rarity in a region so large, where farms and settlements were frequently separated by great distances. Churches and religious organizations were rare, and great gatherings in "camp-meetings" became a feature of the Central Valley. These were held in the delightful forests, and gathered all the inhabitants, to the number, sometimes, of many thousands, from great distances around. They, in part, served the purposes of social meetings and of the politician, who courted acquaintance and public favor, as well as of the earnestly religious. Social life had then its Golden Period. It was never more free from the deceptions, hollow appearances and envies of an older country. Dress was simple, inexpensive, and chiefly homespun; manners were truly cordial and free, and life was so healthy that there was comparatively little vice. It was the frank, open, generous youth of society, before the cares, ambitions and antagonisms of later life have begun.

This condition was very gradually changed in after years, though the locality was subject to constant transfer. The towns were already much like Eastern towns, and society there was more or less collected around natural centers. Character and condition had begun the work of analysis and separation. The introduction of steam on the rivers, the spread of a speculating mania, and the gradual withdrawal of the wealthy, educated and ambitious into social coteries by themselves, soon raised distinctions, in the older regions, but community of feeling and free hospitality traveled westward with the new settlements.

By 1820 the depression of the war, the increase of steamboats on the rivers, and the opening of other channels of communication, had raised the number of recent settlers above that of the older residents, and considerably modified the character of pioneer life. The poor of Europe flocked in, the educated youth of the East, who hoped for more rapid advance

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ment, came West, with enterprising men of business, who looked forward here to larger fortunes more easily made. What would become of this medley of people of such diverse training, habits and character? The question was often asked by the philanthropist and statesman with much anxiety.

CHAPTER X.

THE STEAMBOAT ERA.

The feeling of isolation in the upper Valley from the markets of the East grew as the immigration became wholesale. Not only was the distance to tidewater towns across the mountains far more difficult to pass than that across the Atlantic now, but the distances were so great in the Valley itself, by want of roads and the circuitous routes by the rivers, and by the impossibility of employing the wind as a motive power, to any great or certain extent, that the moving of the only materials whereby wealth could be accumulated became increasingly burdensome and unprofitable. The larger the area opened for cultivation the less valuable had produce become. The distance from New Orleans to Atlantic seaports by sailing vessels was great and the passage perilous.

So costly was transport, even to those who lived immediately by the rivers, that little was to be made, and a vast amount of labor was required to compass that little. It had its compensations in making the inhabitants of the extremes of the Valley known to each other and entered as an element of culture into the life and thoughts of the backwoodsmen. It also strengthened the bonds of union between the distant parts of the country, which was no small matter at this early period.

Yet, those who could only find good lands at a distance from the streams obtained little pay for anything they could produce. The cost of getting it to market was too great, the Valley was too prolific for so large a number of farmers and so much isolation from the world of men and the centers of trade. But when this difficulty began to threaten to crush the poorer and later immigrants a new motive power was developed to wonderful efficiency. The Age of Steam