AIDS AND ATTRACTIONS TO TRAFFIC AND TRAVEL 418
Pleasure Riding -- Extent, Advantages to a Community to Have
Tourists Pass through, Ranking and Parking, Parking Spaces a
Convenience to Motorists -- Space for and Angle of Parking,
Location of Parking Spaces, One Way and Rotary Traffic, Opera
House Traffic, Public Garages -- Several Story Garages.
Terminal Stations -- Omaha, Poughkeepsie, Elsewhere. Gas, Air
and Water Stations, Named and Numbered Roads; Marks, Signs and
Guides -- Distance and Direction Signs, Letters and Colors,
Warning Signs, Map Signs, Detour Signs, Location of Detour
Markers, Dummy Cop, Semaphores, Signal Lights and Colors, Road
and Street Lighting, City Traffic Lighting, Traffic Officer,
Semaphore and Towers. Touring: Prevalency and Pleasures of,
Camping -- Grounds, Caravans, and Equipment. Camp Sites,
Hotels, Parks, Information Bureaus and Agencies.
INDEX 465
LIST OF INSERTS
1. STORM KING HIGHWAY _Frontispiece_
A Great Engineering Project Along the Hudson between Cornwall and
West Point, N. Y.
PAGE
2. THE APPIAN WAY 22
Showing the original Paving Stones laid 300 B.C.
3. MAP OF ITALY 24
Showing Some of the Twenty or More Roads that Radiated from Rome.
4. MAP OF ROMAN ROADS IN ENGLAND 26
(After Jackman: “Development of Transportation in Modern
England.”)
5. MAP OF THE NORTH-EASTERN PORTION OF THE UNITED STATES 36
Showing the Location of Well-known Portages. There Were Other
Portages Wherever Two Water Courses Came Near to Each Other. (See
Farrand: “American Nation,” Vol. I, and Thwaites, Ib. Vol. VII.)
6. MAP 42
Showing Main Highways and Waterways in the United States about
1830. When the Railroads Entered the Industrial Arena, the Country
Was Being Covered With a Net Work of Highways. (Based on Tanner’s
Map of 1825 and Turner in “American Nation,” Vol. XIV.)
7. MAP 54
Showing Transcontinental Trails in the United States.
8. WAY BILL 66
Used on the Slaymaker Stage Line from Lancaster to Philadelphia,
1815. (Courtesy of Prof. P. K. Slaymaker, Lincoln, Nebr.)
9. THE SAULT STE. MARIE CANAL 76
10. THE EVOLUTION OF THE RAILWAY TRAIN 102
1. The First Railway Coach--1825.
2. Horse Power Locomotive--1829-30.
3. Stourbridge Lion--1829.
4. Stevenson’s Rocket Locomotive--1829.
5. The DeWitt Clinton Locomotive--1831.
(From Brown’s “First Locomotive”--Courtesy of D. Appleton &
Company.)
11. MODERN LOCOMOTIVES 120
1. Showing the Growth in the Size of Locomotives During the Past
Twenty Years. The Smaller Locomotive is an _American_ Type
Class Engine of 1900. The Larger is a _Mountain Type_ Engine.
Both are Used on the C. B. & Q. R. R. Photographed at
Lincoln, Nebr., Sept., 1922.
2. One of the New Gearless _Electric_ Locomotives Built by the
General Electric Company for the C. M. & St. Paul R. R.
12. TRANSPORTATION ACROSS DEATH VALLEY 126
A Picturesque Method of Earlier Days.
13. GOOD ROADS DAY IN JACKSON COUNTY, MO. 132
14. CHART OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE U. S. BUREAU OF PUBLIC ROADS
AND RURAL ENGINEERING, 1917 142
15. HARD SURFACE HIGHWAY IN OREGON 146
16. A FARMER’S WIFE MEETING THE POSTAL TRUCK 146
17. TRACKLESS TROLLEY OPERATED ON STATEN ISLAND, N. Y. 166
18. MOTOR OR RAIL-CAR 166
Showing the Gasoline Locomotive and Trailer, Operated by the
Chicago & Great Western R. R.
19. THE EVOLUTION OF THE STEAM AUTOMOBILE 182
1. The Cugnot Steam Carriage--1770.
2. The Trevithick & Vivian Steam Carriage--1801.
3. The Gurney Steam Carriage--1827.
4. The Church Automobile Carriage (Steam)--1833.
5. Gaillardit’s Steam Carriage--1894.
(Courtesy of the _Scientific American_.)
20. A MODERN RURAL PASSENGER BUS 184
21. A NEW YORK CITY “STEPLESS” BUS 184
It Has an Emergency Door, with Wire Window Guards, and will Seat
30 Persons.
22. THE EVOLUTION OF THE GASOLINE MOTOR CAR 188
1. Panhard & Levassor Carriage--1895.
2. Duryea Motor Wagon--1895.
3. The Benz Motocycle.
4. Hertel’s Gasoline Carriage--1896.
5. The Olds Horseless Carriage.
6. Winton’s Racing Machine.
(Courtesy of the _Scientific American_.)
23. HAULING BEANS BY MOTOR TRUCK AND TRAILER 200
Sacramento Valley, Calif.
24. HAULING SUGAR BEETS TO MARKET IN A MOTOR TRUCK 200
25. TRAFFIC ON FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY 234
26. GIVING A MACADAM ROAD AN APPLICATION OF TARVIA BINDER 254
This is Followed by a Coat of Screenings and then the Road is
Rolled Again.
27. A ROAD OF MIXED ASPHALT AND CONCRETE BEING TESTED OUT 254
28. CROWNING A DIRT ROAD IN CALIFORNIA WITH TRACTOR DRAWN GRADER 263
29. A MILK TRUCK EQUIPPED WITH BOTH CANS AND TANK 296
30. A LUMBER LOG TRUCK USED IN THE NORTHWEST 296
31. A NATIONAL HIGHWAY IN THE MOUNTAINS OF MARYLAND 332
32. A DANGEROUS CURVE MADE SAFE BY AN ARTISTIC CONCRETE WALL 364
The Tennessee State Highway at Lookout Mountain, Built of Cemented
Concrete.
33. PIN OAK STREET TREES 388
About 15 Years Old on Land that Was Once Considered to be a part
of the “Great American Desert.”
34. A COTTONWOOD WIND BREAK 388
Formerly very Common in the Prairie Region.
35. WARNING AND DIRECTION SIGNS USED IN THE STATE OF ILLINOIS 434
36. TRAFFIC GUIDES 442
(From Eno’s “The Science of Highway Traffic Regulation.”)
37. NEW YORK CITY TRAFFIC GUIDES 444
“In November, 1903, one hundred blue and white enameled signs,
directing slow-moving vehicles to keep near the right-hand curb,
were put in use in New York. These were probably the first traffic
regulation signs ever used.”
(From Eno’s “The Science of Highway Traffic Regulation.”)
38. TRAFFIC TOWER ON FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY 446
39. CAMPING GROUND AND CARAVAN 458
40. A GIPSYING TOURING CARAVAN 458
HIGHWAYS AND HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION
CHAPTER I
TRANSPORTATION A MEASURE OF CIVILIZATION
As the several peoples inhabiting the earth have progressed from
barbarism through the different stages of civilization, the
transportation occasioned by their wants and desires has kept a close
pace. By a study of the transportation--travel, movement of goods and
commodities--and the means and facilities for its accomplishment,
the relative civilization of any people, their rank and position may
be accurately surveyed, graduated, and estimated. The highways of a
nation, whether they be of the land or sea, or both, are most vital
elements in its progress and could almost as well as transportation be
considered the measuring rod of civilization.
=Stages in Civilization.=--Sociologists differ as to what constitute
the several stages of civilization. One might trace the development
of man through literature, another through art, another through
government; others consider his economic activities the more
fundamental factors. The most widely used economic classification,
according to Ely,[1] is based upon the increasing power of man over
nature and consists of (1) Direct Appropriation, (2) The Pastoral
Stage, (3) The Agricultural Stage, (4) The Handicraft Stage, and (5)
The Industrial Stage. These stages are well illustrated in English
history. The stage of direct appropriation corresponding to the
prehistoric period and up to 54 B.C., when the Romans overran the
island of Britain; the Pastoral stage from this time to the invasion by
William the Conqueror, 1066; the Agricultural up to about the discovery
of America, when a great impetus was given to travel and discovery; the
stage of Handicraft, from 1500 to the invention of the steam engine
and its application to manufacture at the beginning of the eighteenth
century; the Industrial stage, to the present time. While these
stages necessarily overlap each other considerably, it will be seen
that as one declines the next is ushered in with some radical change
in government or in economic or industrial condition. The present
day--immediately following as it does the Great World War, out of
which have issued many scientific discoveries and inventions, notably
those advancing the theory and practice of air navigation, with many
potential possibilities in new lines of transportation; and the setting
forth of an idea which is capable of leading to a better understanding
or even a confederation of nations and altering all forms of national
government--may be the beginning of a new stage of civilization.
=Stage of Direct Appropriation.=--This stage covers the whole course of
prehistoric man from the time the first ape stood erect some 500,000
years ago[2] through the stone, bronze, and iron ages to the age of
literature and art. During these long years civilization traveled far,
for the least cultured savages observed have advanced not only away
beyond the highest of the lower animals but also beyond the lowest
intellectual estate of which human beings may be supposed capable
of subsisting. And from the lowest to the highest of these tribes
are shown traits varying as greatly in degree as from one stage in
the above classification to another. The Indians at the time of the
discovery of America and the three centuries following, and many of the
tribes of Africa during the explorations of Livingstone and Stanley,
were and still are in this stage and hence have been subjected to
scientific study and investigation. Their governments while variable
are of the primitive types. Ordinarily a chief autocratically rules
because of hereditary influence. Little is manufactured, planting is
scarcely known; by hunting, fishing, and collecting nature’s products
of wild seeds and roots is a subsistence obtained often with long,
arduous, and dangerous labor. Efficiency, as we understand that term
to-day, is very low, and the number of persons that a given area can
support is few. No one can predict but what to-morrow he may have to
go hungry or suffer cold from the inclemency of the weather, for his
store of food is _nil_ or small, his shelter rudimentary and clothing
scanty. Note the hardships of the party of Henry M. Stanley during his
expedition across the African wilderness in quest of Emin Pasha.[3]
Notwithstanding Stanley’s men were possessed of firearms and edged
tools and carried some provisions with them, and were traversing
a country teeming with vegetable and animal life, many times they
were on the verge of starvation. The number of the natives in these
wildernesses are no doubt kept low because of the extreme difficulties
of procuring the necessities of life.
The barbarian requires less, of course, than the civilized man; he
is satisfied with mere subsistence. He is improvident and relies
upon picking up his needs from day to day as a robin picks worms
from the grass. Cannibalism often exists, for the sacredness of
human life has not yet been established, although magic and crude
religious rites are seldom missing. While private personal property
is recognized and retained by personal prowess, the ownership of land
is absent. Coöperation of the crudest sort only is found; division
of labor consists largely in having the females perform the work of
planting, cultivating, carrying burdens--when these are attempted
at all--cooking and caring for the children in the crudest fashion,
leaving to the men the work of hunting, fishing, and fighting. Each
tribe is self-sufficient and consists of a chief with a few followers
bound together loosely for the purposes of protection from other
tribes. Exchange, barter, and trade is at its lowest ebb; consequently
transportation is practically unnecessary, and roadways except mere
trails do not exist.
=The Pastoral Stage.=--In the process of evolution certain animals
undoubtedly were domesticated and used for food. Whether or not this
domestication preceded or followed primitive agriculture or “hoe
culture,” is not important, as the pastoral stage of culture evidently
lies between the hunting and the farming stages. The written history of
mankind indicates that this stage largely prevailed among the earlier
Hebrew, Greek, and Teutonic races. A private ownership in cattle and
herds was recognized, but the necessity of moving about with the flocks
precluded fixed habitations, although large areas were claimed and held
or endeavored to be held from trespass thereon by neighboring tribes.
A given area would thus support a much larger number of people than
in the preceding stage. A small amount of trading or bartering was
carried on and consequently some transportation was required, but road
building as such was little known. Rivers and coast waters for canoes
and dugouts were no doubt early taken advantage of by the aborigines of
bordering territories. But since there is so little division of labor,
so little of barter and exchange, commerce was not developed much
during this stage.
=The Agricultural Stage.=--The growing and storage of crops, increased
by the use of animal power, greatly changed the economic and social
conditions of man. It made possible and profitable the living in fixed
habitations, even in communities, and this brought out the needs of
rules of government. But even yet each family provided without the
assistance of others for practically all its own needs. In planting,
reaping, threshing, grinding the meal and cooking, the family became
the unit. No great division of labor was yet evident, consequently
exchange, barter, and transportation still remained low. Ownership of
land was necessary if a family was to cultivate the same land year
after year. This meant definite rules and laws and consequently the
development of governments. Ownership of herds and land brought wealth
and a certain distinction in the community. Slavery, which had no doubt
existed to some extent in the pastoral stage, here, because it greatly
increased wealth, grew immensely. Large families likewise meant more
workmen and greater wealth, distinction, and leisure, hence polygamy
and polyandry often existed. As the evolution continued there was a
trend toward handicraft and the division of labor; the products of one
place began to be exchanged for the products of other places. This
necessitated some forms of transportation, meager though they might be,
and trails between communities.
=The Manorial and Feudal Systems.=--In England and on the continent
during the later years of this stage there were developed the manorial
or feudal forms of government. The people lived largely in villages
each controlled by a lord or earl (eorl) and to whom in return for
his protection, the use of land, and other favors, they were bound to
return to him service in the cultivation of his land and in waging war
when called upon to do so. The lords in turn held their allegiance to
the king. Some handicraftsmen were among the retainers but they were so
few that they did not form an important part of the village, neither
was there a great deal of travel or transportation. The manor instead
of the family was the unit, and it was almost self-sufficient. The land
was allotted in small tracts and tilled in the manner designated by the
lord. Each person raised barley, oats, peas, and lentils sufficient for
his own needs. Variation in crops was little practiced. Much land at
distances from the manor was still devoted to herds and flocks.
However, toward the later part of this stage, the feudal system began
to break down. There were more free-holders and free-tenants, living
upon the land they cultivated according to their own ideas. Wheat, rye,
flax, and root crops were assuming greater importance. This variety in
farming and the larger fields cultivated by the individual naturally
increased the products to be sold or exchanged and hence increased
transportation. People who had devoted only so much of their time
to spinning and weaving as was necessary to supply their own family
needs, were beginning to do more, selling the excess and purchasing
from others things not grown or manufactured by themselves. Thus were
developed towns as centers of trade; money as a medium of exchange
assumed greater importance; and a division of labor brought into being
and increased the social standing of trades and professions. Thus was
ushered in the Handicraft Stage of civilization.
=The Handicraft Stage.=--In England this stage lasted through
approximately five centuries, from 1200 to 1700. The merging of one
period into another came about so gradually that a definite date
can hardly be designated, and the time is so long that undoubtedly
many changes occurred in the economic activities as well as in the
government and literature of the people.
While it is probable that merchants, middlemen who bought from one
person and sold to another, had thrived throughout the earlier
civilizations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and even extended their
trade to Britain, merchandising held a comparatively minor position
in England until the twelfth century, when merchants became very
prominent, so much so that combinations or guilds were formed by them
in all the large towns for the purpose of protecting and controlling
the conduct of business and, to some extent, of maintaining a
monopolistic control of the trade in their particular businesses. A
guild was an association or fraternity of persons engaged in the same
line of business. It differed from a trade-union in that the guild was
an association of masters and employees, whereas the trade-union is an
association of employees only.
Many of the merchant guilds grew wealthy and strong; they obtained
Royal Charters from the Crown either by direct payment or by an
arrangement to pay a special tax, or secured recognition in the
borough charters. By authority of these they were endowed with certain
privileges such as: (_a_) limiting the number of their own members and
the number who could participate in any line of merchandising; (_b_)
entering into secret price agreements and trade arrangements; (_c_)
controlling the import and export of wares; (_d_) the establishing of a
court which had absolute jurisdiction over its members and others not
members engaged in the same line of business. This court “could settle
trade disputes, discipline its apprentices with the whip if necessary,
could imprison its journeymen who struck work, and could fine its
master members who acted against its rules. And, finally, the members
of the company were forbidden to appeal to any other court unless their
own court failed to obtain justice for them.”[4] Moreover, the meeting
together for social enjoyment, feasting, and worship; the helping one
another in sickness and poverty; and uniting together for the pursuit
of some common cause, naturally brought about very close and fraternal
relations.
=Craft-guilds.=--Craftsmen of like occupations joined together
in guilds also and they, too, became not only numerous but very
influential. They regulated their own internal affairs and specified
how many apprentices might be entered, and under what circumstances
a man might become a journeyman or master craftsman. Numerous other
guilds, social and religious, were extant throughout Europe.
=Effect upon Trade.=--The merchant guilds and the craft-guilds
materially affected the production and trade of the community and
country. The merchants of Phoenicia and later of Greece and Rome are
said to have visited the British Isles to secure tin and copper. The
great merchant guilds outfitted adventures to the ends of the then
known world to secure the goods--whether they were silks, spices,
furs or grain--in which they dealt. They were instrumental in the
passage of laws encouraging and securing commerce. They themselves
regulated the quality of goods dealt in. For example the Goldsmiths’
Guild of London required that all silver and gold-plate and jewelry
manufactured within three miles of London should be brought to the
guild hall for inspection. If it did not come up to the specified
standard it was ordered remelted; if it did it received the “Hall Mark”
that anyone purchasing it might be assured of its quality. It is said
the guilds were so punctilious in the matter of quality that “Made in
England” goods received in the markets of the world a standing of the
highest rank; a reputation that never entirely disappeared, and as a
consequence English uprightness of character became proverbial.
=The Domestic System.=--All this made necessary the building of ships
and harbors, and the improvement of internal highways of trade, and
these in turn stimulated manufacture which as yet was carried on
by hand. The family instead of the town or guild became the unit;
apprentices were entered and kept, usually, as members of the family
and worked along side the sons and daughters of the master. As these
grew to manhood their pay, beginning with mere keep, was gradually
increased with their work and responsibility until at the end of seven
years they were fitted to go forth as journeymen and later themselves
became masters. The work was done at or near the master’s home. The raw
material was usually received from a middleman, to whom was returned
the finished product; the middleman disposed of it to the merchant who
in turn sold it to the consumer.
This corresponds rather closely to what is called the “sweat shop”
method of the present time. Goods in a raw or a semi-raw state are
received by the workman from the “manufacturer” and carried home;
the workman performs, with the help of his family, certain specified
operations and upon the return of the goods is paid for his work. Or
in agriculture, to the contract method, whereby specified products
such as sugar beets, sweet-corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, fruits, and
other products for manufacture, canning, preserving, or pickling in
a factory, are raised by the farmer and sold to the manufacturer
at a previously agreed-upon contract price. Under the guild plan
the manufacturer or importer sold usually to the ultimate consumer.
So the economic system was gradually growing more complex, and the
interdependence of man upon man more pronounced.
The older agricultural procedure had not entirely disappeared. Most
families cultivated land, and raised more or less stock and poultry,
but performed the work of manufacturing as a side line, as at present
in the Middle West farmers make grain and stock raising their main
industry with dairying, vegetable gardening, poultry, and eggs as mere
adjuncts, although these latter often bring in about as much money as
the former. Defoe[5] describes these methods (1724-1726) as follows:
[The land] was divided into small inclosures from two acres to six
or seven each, seldom more; every three or four pieces of land had
a house belonging to them ... hardly an house standing out of a
speaking distance from another.... We could see at every house a
tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or
shaloon.... At every considerable house was a manufactury.... Every
clothier keeps one horse, at least, to carry his manufactures to
the market, and everyone generally keeps a cow or two or more for
his family. By this means the small pieces of inclosed land about
each house are occupied, for they scarce sow corn enough to feed
their poultry.... The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at the
dye-vat, some at the looms, others dressing the cloths, the women or
children carding or spinning, being all employed, from the youngest
to the oldest.
=Governmental Control.=--The numerous guilds reached their zenith
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and then gradually
diminished in importance. Some of them, however, still remain active in
London. During the recent World War several were engaged in welfare
work. Guilds in France were destroyed or lapsed into desuetude during
the revolution, 1791-1815. Those of Spain and Portugal likewise during
the revolutionary years of 1833-40; of Austria and Germany in 1859-60
and of Italy in 1864. Guilds, as known in Europe, never found a
substantial lodging in the United States.
The functions of the guilds were gradually taken over by the
government, which seemed later to be a better and more satisfactory
medium to control labor, trade, and commerce. Laws were enacted in
England to regulate the entering of apprentices, to force able bodied
men to serve as agricultural laborers in case of need, and to work the
roads annually. Justices of the Peace were given authority to settle
disputes and regulate wages. Foreign trade was by laws and Royal
Grants encouraged; likewise immigration of artisans to introduce new
industries, the establishment of foreign colonies and the development
of banking and insurance. Almshouses were built and poor laws enacted
to care for the old and indigent. The public roads were still very poor
but a beginning was made for their betterment. Macaulay, in writing of
the State of England in 1685,[6] has considerable to say regarding the
condition of the highways. Speaking of the lack of homogeneity among
the people he says:
There was not then the intercourse which now exists between the two
classes. [The Londoner and the rustic Englishman.] Only very great
men were in the habit of dividing the year between town and country.
Few esquires came to the capital thrice in their lives. [And again],
The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of
society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty found in passing from
place to place. _Of all_ inventions, the alphabet and the printing
press alone excepted, _those inventions which abridge distance have
done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement_ of
the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually
as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of
the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove
national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the
branches of the great human family.
[Further on], It was by the highways that both travellers and goods
generally passed from place to place; and those highways appear to
have been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of
wealth and civilization which the nation had even then attained.
The degree of civilization attained was no doubt due to other things
than the public roads. Sea transportation brought to England the
products of the world. Coast transportation was well developed and
river and canal transportation had well begun. Macaulay states that
One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been the
defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair the
highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced to
give their gratuitous labor six days in the year.... That a route
connecting two great towns, which have a large and thriving trade
with each other, should be maintained at the cost of the rural
population scattered between them, is obviously unjust.
This sounds like modern arguments against paving rural roads and
charging the cost to the abutting property, and is evidently one good
reason for state and national aid.
However, transportation and travel continued to improve. On the main
roads “waggons” were employed to transport goods and stage coaches
for people, while pack animals and riding horses were used on less
frequented trails and roads. Four and six horses were necessary to pull
a carriage or a coach “because with a smaller number there was great
danger of sticking fast in the mire.” A diligence ran between London
and Oxford in two days, but in 1669 it was announced that the “Flying
Coach would perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset.” The
heads of the university after solemn deliberation gave consent and the
experiment proved successful. The rival university at Cambridge, not
to be outdone, set up a diligence to run from Cambridge to London in
one day. Soon flying coaches were carrying passengers to other points.
Posts were established for the change of horses and longer distances
essayed. This mode of traveling was extolled by contemporaneous writers
“as far superior to any similar vehicles ever known in the world.” It
is not to be thought that these advances in rapid transportation were
without objectors. According to Macaulay,
It was vehemently argued that this mode of conveyance would be fatal
to the breed of horses and to the noble art of horsemanship; that the
Thames, which had long been an important nursery of seamen, would
cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up to Windsor and
down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers would be ruined by
hundreds; that numerous inns, at which mounted travelers had been in
the habit of stopping, would be deserted, and would no longer pay any
rent; that the new carriages were too hot in summer and too cold in
winter; that the passengers were grievously annoyed by invalids and
crying children; that the coach sometimes reached the inn so late
that it was impossible to get supper, and sometimes started so early
that it was impossible to get breakfast.
Objections of this character have been made against every innovation
and advancement in travel and transportation to the present day when
the air-plane is beginning to attract notice as an economic vehicle.
Laws were then demanded and passed, as they are now, to regulate power
and speed, accommodations and rates, and multifarious other things
which might affect the privileges or profits of those interested in
older methods, as well as laws for the protection and safety of the
general public.
=Agriculture.=--It might be thought that the agriculture of the
preceding stage of development might wane. But not so; with the
division of labor and improved transportation and marketing facilities
agriculture received a great impetus. Larger tracts were farmed by
the individual. Growing crops and stock became more of a business and
from the lords of the manor was evolved the landed aristocracy of the
country. To be sure, there were holders who cultivated their own soil,
but much was held upon leaseholds for short or long periods. Many still
lived in the villages where “commons” were laid out for the pasturage
of the few cows each family needed for its own milk. Farms were
divided by hedges into fields or closes, the amount of land depending
upon the rent. The “Book of Surveying,” by Fitzherbert, 1539, gives
reasons for such closes and explains the manner of laying them out so
that they shall be most convenient and together. The following is a
specimen of his style:
Now every husband hath sixe severall closes whereof iii. be for
corne, the fourthe for his leyse, the fyfthe for his commen pastures,
and the sixte for his haye; and in wynter time there is but one
occupied with corne, and then hath the husbande other fyue to occupy
tyll lent come, and then he that hath his falowe felde, his ley
felde, and his pasture felde al sommer, and when he hath mowen his
medowe then he hath his medowe grounde, soo that if he hath any
weyke catel that wold be amended, or dyvers maner of catel, he may
put them in any close he wyll, the which is a great advantage; and
if all should lye commen, then wolde the edyche of the corne feldes
and the aftermath of all the medowes be eaten in X or XII dayes. And
the rych men that hath moche catel wold have the advantage, and the
poore man can have no helpe nor relefe in wynter when he hath most
nede; ... and if any of his thre closes that he hath for his corne be
worn or ware bare, then he may breke and plowe up his close that he
had for his layse, or the close that he had for his commen pasture,
or bothe, and sowe them with corne and let the other lye for a time,
and so shall he have always reist grounds, the which will bear moche
corne, with lytel donge; and also he shall have a great profyte of
the wod in the hedges when it is growen; and not only these profytes
and advantages aforesaid but he shall save moche more than al these,
for by reason of these closes he shall save meate drinke, and wages
of a shepherde, the wages of the heerdmen, and the wages of the
swineherde, the which may fortune to be as chargeable as all his
holle rent; and also his corne shall be better saved from eatings or
destroying with catel.
Later the system of crop rotation came into vogue resulting in great
improvement in the fertility of the soil.
In the same author’s “Book of Husbandry,” 1534, are described farm
tools and their uses. There are explanations to show where a “horse
plow” is better and where an “oxen plow.” It indicates that beans,
peas, wheat, barley, and oats are common crops, and that some
vegetables and root-crops were coming into use. Wheat was probably
sowed after plowing up a pasture or “fallowe” field, for he observes,
the greater clottes (clods) the better wheate, for the clottes
kepe the wheate warm all wynter; and at march they will melte and
breake and fae in many small peces, the which is a new donynge and
refreshynge of the corne.
The industries and arts of transportation continued to develop: ocean
craft, especially, became more numerous and more efficient. Learning
and art grew in harmony as the intercourse of the peoples of the
country and of the world increased.
=The Industrial Stage.=--This stage of economical civilization, while
brought about gradually through many years as factories and special
work shops came into existence, was nevertheless greatly accelerated
by the inventions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The
invention of the canal lock (it is a disputed question whether in
Holland or in Italy) in the fourteenth century had made practicable
the building of many canals throughout Europe, one of the largest
across France connecting the Bay of Biscay with the Mediterranean Sea.
However, the building of important commercial canals began in England
with the Bridgewater Canal from Worsley to Manchester, completed in
1767. Green[7] tells us that the main roads which lasted fairly well
through the middle ages had broken down under the increased production
of the eighteenth century. That the new lines of trades lay along
“mere country lanes”; that much of the woolen trade had to be carried
on long trains of pack animals at a large cost; that transportation
“in the case of heavier goods such as coal distribution was almost
impracticable save along the greater rivers.” In fact coal was
ordinarily referred to as “sea coal” because it was brought to most
ports by water routes. The Duke of Bridgewater and a young engineer
of the name of Brindley solved the problem of transportation for the
time being by beginning the great network of canals which later covered
England to the extent of more than 3000 miles. Too great praise cannot
be given to the engineers and constructors of these canals. Brindley
considered canals not as adjuncts of rivers and bays, on the contrary
“rivers were only meant,” he said, “to feed canals.” He carried this
canal by means of an aqueduct over the river to Manchester, thus
bringing the coal to a new thriving manufacturing city. Green further
says (Paragraph 1528)
To English trade the canal opened up the richest of all markets, the
market of England itself. Every part of the country was practically
thrown open to the manufacturer; and the impulse which was given by
this facility of carriage was at once felt in a vast development of
production. But such a development would have been impossible had
not the discovery of this new mode of distribution been accompanied
by the discovery of a new productive force. In the coal which lay
beneath her soil England possessed a store of force which had
hitherto remained almost useless.
Not the least were the new methods of smelting iron with coal instead
of wood, which changed the whole aspect of the iron trade and which
made Great Britain for many years the workshop of the world. Lead,
copper, and tin were also mined and smelted by the use of coal. The
great advance of the “industrial revolution” did not come until Watt’s
improvements upon the steam engines of Newcomen, Cawley, and Savery,
which were themselves improvements over earlier inventions of Papin,
della Porta, and Worcester, made practicable the transfer of energy
stored up in coal to the movement of machinery. He changed the steam
engine from a clumsy, wasteful, inefficient machine into a workable
apparatus little differing from the reciprocating steam engines of the
present. Up until the successful operation of the turbine engine, the
principal advances upon Watt’s engine were mere details, though often
of great importance. For instance the boilers for the generation of
steam were improved; the enlarged application of the principle of
expansion, developing better cut-off mechanisms and governors, to more
economical construction due to better facilities and better knowledge
of materials and their properties; and to the application of the steam
engine in locomotives to propel transportation cars.
Watt’s claims and specifications for patents from 1769 to 1784 cover
such inventions as:
1. Methods of keeping the cylinder or steam vessel hot by covering it
with wood or other slow heat-conducting materials, by surrounding it
with steam or other heated bodies, and by suffering no water or other
substance colder than steam to touch it.
2. By condensing the steam in vessels entirely distinct from the
cylinder, called condensers, which are to be kept cool.
3. By drawing out of the condenser all uncondensed vapors or gases by
means of an air pump.
4. The use of the expansion force of steam directly against the
cylinder.
5. The double-acting engine and the conversion of the reciprocating
motion into a circular motion.[8]
6. Throttle valve with governor and gear for operating the same,
parallel motion for opening and closing the valves, and indicator.
These inventions not only made it possible to replace hand-labor often
with machines, but made it possible to construct machines much more
rapidly and to make them in every way more convenient.
Improvement in the arts of spinning and weaving caused the textile
establishments and population of north England to go forward by leaps
and bounds.
Previous to the invention of the “fly shuttle” in 1733 by John Kay of
Bury, the weaver had to throw the shuttle through the warp by hand.
Weaving became much more rapid; also by having several shuttles with
different-colored yarn stripes and checks could be woven into the
cloth. Since weaving had been made quicker and easier there came a
demand for more yarn. Three separate inventions satisfied this, viz.,
James Hargreaves of Blackburn invented his “jenny” about 1767, by
which eight threads could be spun at once. At the same time Richard
Arkwright, a barber of Preston, invented and developed the throstle
spinning frame (1769-1775). Samuel Crompton, about 1775, invented
his spinning “mule,” which seemed to combine the good principles of
the others. Power was applied to spinning about 1785 and then it was
weaving that needed accelerating. To Cartwright in 1784 is ascribed the
honor of inventing the power loom. Other inventions for both spinning
and weaving have made almost automatic the running of thousands of
spindles and hundreds of looms in a single factory.
=Railways Developed.=--With power manufacturing and increased
production due to the adoption of improved factory systems came still
greater demand for transportation. Tramways had already been laid in
1676 for transporting coal from the mines to the sea. The rails were
first made of scantling laid in the wheel ruts, then of straight rails
of oak on which “one horse would draw from four or five chaldrons
of coal.” Later (1765) cast-iron trammels 5 feet long by 4 inches
wide were nailed to the wooden rails. These trammels collected dust,
therefore in 1789 Jessop laid down at Loughborough cast-iron edge-rails
and put a flanged wheel on the waggon. The rails were also placed on
chairs and sleepers (ties), the first instance of this method. The
distance apart of the rails was 4 feet 8¹⁄₂ inches, what is now known
as “standard gauge.” The success of these coal roads suggested tramways
for freight and for passenger transportation between the larger towns.
The canals had become congested with much traffic; it is said that
notwithstanding there were three between Liverpool and Manchester the
merchandise passing “did not average more than 1200 tons daily.” The
average rate of carriage was 18s. ($4.37) per ton, and the average
time of transit on the 50 miles of canal was thirty-six hours. The
conveyance of passengers by the improved coach roads, was, for then,
quite rapid but rather expensive.
Some experimental locomotives had been made and used in the mining
regions. Their success led to the building of others. The Stockton and
Darlington Railway opened in September, 1825, by a train of thirty-four
vehicles, making a gross load of 90 tons, drawn by one engine driven by
George Stephenson, with a signal man on horseback in advance. The train
made at times as high as 15 miles per hour. The rail used weighed 28
pounds per yard. This road was intended entirely for freight but the
demand of the people to ride was so pressing that a passenger coach to
carry six inside and fifteen to twenty outside was put on to make the
round trip in two hours at a fare of one shilling.
When the bill passed for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1826
Stephenson was appointed engineer in charge at a salary of $5000 per
year. This road made a great impression on the national mind, no little
enhanced by the competition of locomotives at its completion in 1829,
resulting in the victory of Stephenson’s engine the “Rocket.” It made
the then astonishing speed of 35 miles per hour and proved conclusively
the practicability of railway locomotion.
To follow the progress of industry during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries would require volumes. More has probably been accomplished,
not without evils at times, than in the whole preceding history of the
world. And as no small part of these accomplishments are the means
and amount of travel and traffic and associated developments and
organization made necessary by the vast industries which now supply the
world’s wants, once more it may be asserted that the civilization of
the world can be measured by its transportation.
=Some Historic Roads and Their Influence.=--In the brief survey
of the stages through which ordinarily a civilization passes note
has frequently been made that as the world progresses so does the
necessary transportation increase and improve in character. It is not
contended that civilization follows the improvement of transportation,
although that is no doubt sometimes the case, but that the state of
transportation follows up and down with the state of civilization.
Very likely the same could be truthfully said of other elements of
civilization such as literature, art, religion, and government. Or
even if there be applied Guizot’s three tests of a civilized people:
“First, they review their pledges and honor; second, they reverence and
pursue the beautiful in painting, architecture, and literature; third,
they exhibit sympathy in reform toward the poor, the weak and the
unfortunate,” it will be found that those nations most progressed in
traffic and travel will rank highest in these tests.
=Early Highways.=--To return to some of the important earlier
highways. All evidence seems to indicate that civilization had its
origin in western Asia. Early history speaks of the civilization
and culture of Arabia and Egypt, of Assyria and Persia. Coeval with
these civilizations were trade and commerce. Great caravans of camels
traversed the sandy highway with their accompanying merchants carrying
many products of many lands--frankincense and myrrh from Arabia; cloths
and carpets from Babylon and Sardis; shawls from Cashmere; leather
from Cordavan and Morocco; tin, copper, gold, and silver utensils from
Phœnicia; pearls from the Far East; and grain and other agricultural
products nourished and grown by the beneficence of the great mother
Nile. The extensive civilizations of these countries are handed down
stingily by cuneiform inscriptions on clay tablets scattered here and
there among the ruins of their ancient towns and villages, or inscribed
upon granite mountain sides as historical memoranda for future
generations. Even Holy Writ says little about roads and highways, but
that they were known is evident from the few references made. Those
things which are commonplace often receive least attention by writers.
In Isaiah, 35:8, may be read: “And a highway shall be there, and a
way, and it shall be called the way of holyness ... the wayfaring
men, though fools, shall not err therein.” And again, Isa. 40:3-4,
“The voice of him that cryeth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way
of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every
valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low:
and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”
These would certainly indicate that in Isaiah’s time there were both
travelers and roads marked and graded. Isaiah in other places shows
that he, if not himself a road builder, is familiar with that process:
Isa. 57:14, “And shall say, cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way
take up the stumbling block out of the way of my people.” Isa. 62:10,
“Prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather
out the stones; lift up a standard for the people.” Also Jeremiah
likens the path of the wicked to an ungraded road. Jeremiah 18:15,
“Because my people have forgotten me, they have burned incense to
vanity, they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient
paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up.”
The trade along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and across
Palestine and the great Arabian deserts to Persia, to Babylonia, and
possibly to India was evidently of importance to the fluctuating
destinies of Egypt and Assyria, and later of Greece, Rome, and
Turkey; so much so, that many wars were waged for the control of the
great highway over which it passed. Palestine became a territory of
importance. It is said Jerusalem has suffered some three score sieges,
most of them because she dominated this highway, being at or near the
confluence of its forks reaching east into the deserts, north toward
the straits over which a crossing could be made into Europe, and
southward to Egypt. Egypt and Assyria fought for its control; Greece
and Rome in turn came into possession of it; Turkey and the Mohammedans
for centuries monopolized it; and the recent great World War was no
doubt accentuated by the cupidity of Germany to control a long line of
transportation through Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Mesopotamia
to Persia, Baluchistan and India.[9]
Alexander the Great overran the East, besieged Tyre, and converted
an island into an isthmus in order to secure and hold control of the
highway and the rich bounty imagined to be at its farther end. “Babylon
is a ruin, a stately and solitary group of palms marks where Memphis
stood, jackals slake their thirst in the waters of the sacred lake by
the hall of a thousand columns at Thebes, but the road that formed the
nexus between these vanished civilizations remains after the winds of
four millenniums have sighed themselves to silence over the graves of
its forgotten architects and engineers.”[10]
But the Greater Greece, built up by the personality and sword of
Alexander the Great, fell, largely, because of the lack of roads.
The very name of Alexander was sufficient to subdue city after city,
but as soon as his personal influence was at an end the cities fell
apart. Here was a wonderful opportunity. With magnificent natural-made
waterways, with innumerable safe harbors what a chance for commerce,
for trade with the entire world. The islands of the Aegean Sea were
stepping stones to Asia Minor; Macedonia furnished an open route for
the Bosphorus and Dardanelles; Thrace led to those fertile lands
surrounding the Black Sea and extending away to the Caspian and joining
once more with empire already conquered. On the west there was close
at hand the islands of, and land bordering, the Adriatic, the great
Italian boot, and Sicily where new civilizations were ready to rise and
take on Greek culture for the mere offering. It would seem as though
Greece ought to have become the fostering mother of world colonization,
but the different parts of Greece proper, where the real mental ability
lay, were separated by lack of roads from each other. Athens was
potentially nearer to the Black Sea than to Sparta; Corinth was nearer
Sicily than to Macedonia. The many Grecian tribes were distinct, having
different laws, customs and manners. Intercourse, which could have
been brought about had there been interconnecting roads, was necessary
to weld the people into a homogeneous mass. Sparta and Athens, less
than an hour apart by modern air-plane, because of the mountains,
roadless and almost pathless between them, barriers which they failed
to surmount, developed different forms of civilization, different
thought, habits, and tastes. To Athens the world owes an everlasting
debt for masterpieces in poetry, oratory, architecture, and sculpture.
“There was no Spartan sculpture, no Laconian painter, no Lacedaemonian
poet.” The lack of intercommunication caused differences in language,
in customs, in ideals, and in manners, making of Greece a heterogeneous
conglomeration of tribes where internecine strife was ever present, and
no strong centralized government could exist. Lucky for the best of the
Greek civilization that it would be carried to the ends of the world by
the roads of a young giant which was arising in the west.
=Roman Roads.=--The roads in Rome bore such a prominent part in
the civilization that they could not be entirely overlooked by
contemporaneous writers. The roads are often described as military
roads because they were primarily planned to transport soldiers
quickly and easily to any desirable part of the empire. But no doubt
the greatness of Rome was due more to the traffic in goods and people
brought to and taken away from her precincts by these roads than to
military prowess. Her roads were the arteries and veins through which
the life blood of the nation pulsated; were the sensory and motive
nerves which fetched and carried intelligence, which prompted action.
She received and she disseminated. She was the hub of the universe, her
roads the spokes radiating to and holding together the limits of her
vast domain.
[Illustration:
© _Underwood and Underwood_
THE APPIAN WAY
Showing the original Paving Stones laid 300 B.C.]
How many roads Rome built it is difficult to state, for they were
found in all parts of the empire. Some, as those in Italy, were very
carefully and substantially built; others less so, grading down to
mere trails in the hintermost districts. The Via Egnatia, which was
one of the important provincial roads, is said by Strabo to have been
regularly laid out and marked by milestones from Dyrrhacium, (Durazzo)
on the coast of the Adriatic across from the heel of Italy’s boot
through Thessalonica (Saloniki) and Philippi to Cypselus on the Hebnis
and later to the Hellespont, for Cicero speaks of “that military way of
ours which connects us with the Hellespont.” This road became historic
as the scene of the conflict between the friends and enemies of the
decaying Roman republic. Brutus and Cassius on the one hand here in 42
B.C., met the forces of Antony and Octavius. There tradition states
the ghost of the dead Caesar met Brutus, and as a matter of fact, the
“liberators” were cut to pieces in two engagements. Brutus and Cassius,
believing the cause of the republic lost, both committed suicide, and
the Roman world was soon thereafter in the hands of two masters--Antony
in the East and Octavius in the West. Three centuries later this road
became the leading highway to Byzantium (Constantinople), the great
city founded by Constantine, impregnable in its rocky seclusion,
dominating the waterway to the Black Sea and the rich agricultural land
beyond.
Some twenty of these roads, more if their branches be counted,
concentrated at the Eternal City and passed through her several gates.
Rome could sit on her seven hills and by means of these roads rule
the world. Among the most important of these were the Via Appia, Via
Flaminia and Via Aemilia, Via Aurelia, Via Ostiensis, and Via Latina.
One peculiarity of these Roman roads was their straightness, passing
almost in a direct line between determining points. Another, to
which is due their durability, was their massiveness. Their general
construction may be described as follows: The line of direction having
been laid out trenches were made along each side defining the width,
which was from 13 to 17 feet. The loose earth between was excavated
to secure a firm foundation and the road was then filled or graded
up to the required height with good material, sometimes as high as
20 feet. The pavement usually consisted of a layer of small stones;
then a layer of broken stones cemented with lime mortar; then a layer
of broken fragments of brick and pottery incorporated with clay and
lime; and finally a mixture of gravel and lime or a floor of hard
flat stones cut into rectangular slabs or irregular polygons fitted
nicely together. The whole was frequently 4 feet thick. Along the road
milestones were erected, some of them quite elaborate with carved names
and dates. Near the arch of Septimus Severus in the Roman Forum still
remains a portion of the “Golden Milestone,” a gilded pillar erected
by Augustus, on which were carved the names of roads and lengths
similar to a modern guide post. Some of these roads were used hundreds
of years until they fell into neglect after Rome had been invaded by
the northern barbarians. From a statement of Procopinus, the Appian
Way, construction begun 312 B.C., was in good condition 800 years
later, and he describes it as broad enough for two carriages to pass
each other. It was made of stones brought from some distant quarry
and so fitted to each other (over some 2 feet of gravel) that they
seemed to be thus formed by nature, rather than cemented by art. He
adds that notwithstanding the traffic of so many ages the stones were
not displaced, nor had they lost their original smoothness. The papal
government excavated, repaired, and reopened that road as far as Albano
and it is still being used as a highway.
[Illustration: MAP OF ITALY
Showing some of the twenty or more roads that radiated from Rome]
The Flaminian Way extended from Rome to Ariminum and thence was carried
under the name Via Aemilia through Parma, and Placentia across to
Spain. While not so much traffic passed over it, because the West
was sparsely settled, as over the Appian Way, it nevertheless was a
worthy rival. The Aurelian Way followed up the coast through Etruria
and furnished another highway to Spain and Gaul. The Ostien highway
connected Rome with a splendid harbor at the mouth of the Tiber.
But the Appian Way was rightly the most famous of all; it was the
earliest made, it was perhaps the longest paved road, and it carried
the greatest amount of traffic. The road was built by Appius Claudius
Caecus--then a Roman Censor, afterwards a Consul, from whom it takes
its name--to Capua, a distance of 142 miles. Later it was extended
across the Apennine Mountains through Beneventum, Venusia, and
Tarentum, to Brundisium, a port on the Adriatic Sea, in the heel of the
boot, a total distance of 350 miles. The improvements of Appius were
begun in the year 312 B.C., and carried out at least as far as Capua.
Livy speaks of a road over part of this way some thirty-five years
earlier. A portion outside the walls was paved with lava (silex) in 189
B.C., and during the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117) the Via Appia was
paved from Capua to Brundisium (Niebuhr). From Brundisium (Brindis)
traffic could be carried by ship to Dyrrhacium and thence over the
Via Egnatio to Macedonia and the Bosphorus; or along the coast to the
Grecian towns, to the cities of the Far East and to Egypt. Many are the
references to the noted highway in literature; Milton, in “Paradise
Regained,” book four, bids us to watch flocking to the city, enriched
with spoils, proconsuls, embassies, legions, in “various habits on the
Appian road.”
“What a cosmopolitan throng must have graced that highway in the
first century,” says Dr. Carroll.[11] “Thick-lipped Ethiopians with
rings in noses and ears, swarthy-browed turbaned Mesopotamians,
haughty Parthians, burnoosed Arabs still worshiping their polygods,
hook-nosed Hebrews, carven with the humility of the despised rich,
Greek Pedagogues and Rhetors and Tutors, togaed senators, white-clad
vestals with modest faces, and painted harlots with amber hair. Lictors
clearing the way with rods for some purple clad dignitary of Nero’s
court and carrying the fasces and the ax; street merchants and hawkers
of small wares, slaves scantily clad, stark bemuscled gladiators,
_Cives_ and _Peregrini_, citizens and strangers, displaying, in
varying degree, arrogance and curiosity; long yellow-haired Germans,
their faces smeared with ocher and their yellow hair with oil;
kilted soldiers with long spears and short broad swords; beggars
(the lazzaroni of that bygone age), pathetically sullen or volubly
mendicant in the sunshine lecticae; couches carried by bearers
containing pampered nobles or high-born ladies; the cisium and the
_rhoda meritoria_; the carriage and the hack of that time crossing each
other’s path in the narrow road; children naked and joyous; merchants
on caparisoned asses; the swinging columns of the legionaries; brown,
straight-featured Egyptians. For part of the distance a canal runs
parallel and travelers have their choice to take the pavement or to
ride in state on painted barges dragged by mules; on the pavement a
Pontifex in his robes of office and Augurs exchanging cynical smiles;
the rattle of chariot wheels and some haggard-eyed noble, redolent from
the warm and scented bath, with flower-crowned brow, drives in furious
guise along the Appian Way, while barbarian and Scythian, bond and
free, yield the way before him.”
[Illustration: MAP OF ROMAN ROADS IN ENGLAND
(After Jackman: “Development of Transportation in Modern England.”)]
Davis[12] tells us that the Roman road system after it had become
a network over Italy began to spread over the whole Empire. That
admirable highways were built by peaceful legionaries for commercial
purposes--and that even to-day in North Africa and in the wilds of Asia
Minor where travelers seldom penetrate may be found the Roman road with
its hard stones laid on a solid foundation. He further states that as
a consequence of these roads commerce expanded by leaps and bounds. A
great trade passing down the Red Sea sprang up with India, reaching
to the coast of Ceylon, returning with pearls, rare tapestries, and
spices. Another set penetrated Arabia for much-desired incense, or
unto the heart of Africa for ivory. Also with such merchandising there
came a money system with banks, checks and bonds rivaling those of
the present day. The bridges are an important part of any road. Those
across the Tiber in Rome were regarded as sacred. They were cared for
by a special body of Priests called _pontifaces_ (bridge-makers).
The name Pontifex Maximus was borne by the High Priest and became a
designation for the emperor; it is now applied to the Pope as the
highest authority in the papal or pontifical state.
=Pre-historic American Roads.=--When America was discovered it was
sparsely settled with tribes of semi-civilized peoples. The ordinary
aborigine was in the hunting and fishing stage, just beginning to
cultivate crops. True, tribes claimed regions and attempted by force
to keep other tribes from trespassing thereon. They had no literature
save perhaps a few rough diagrams or drawings. There was no trade or
commerce and consequently no roads except mere trails. Their methods
of transportation consisted in walking or in paddling canoes. In the
making and operating of canoes and of weapons of warfare and of the
chase they were most advanced.
In many parts of the country there had been a civilization, but so long
ago no very authentic knowledge of its character can be predicated
upon the mounds, utensils, and other evidence now remaining. The Mound
Builders and the Cliff Dwellers are as yet to us unknown peoples.
In Mexico, Central America,[13] and Peru a much higher civilization
prevailed. Especially in Peru where a very high state of agriculture
was in vogue. There is even evidence of a considerable degree of Art
and Literature.[14] Many of the remains remind one of early Egyptian
and Persian temples and roads, but perhaps no more lucid description of
the ancient Peruvian roads and transportation exists than that given in
Prescott’s justly celebrated classic, “The Conquest of Peru.” Slightly
abridged it reads thus:
Those who may distrust the accounts of Peruvian industry will find
their doubts removed on a visit to the country. The traveler still
meets, especially in the central regions of the tableland, with
memorials of the past, remains of temples, palaces, fortresses,
terraced mountains, great military roads, aqueducts, and other public
works, which, whatever degree of science they may display in their
execution, astonish him by their number, the massive character of the
materials, and the grandeur of the design. Among them, perhaps the
most remarkable are the great roads, the broken remains of which are
still in sufficient preservation to attest their former magnificence.
There were many of these roads, traversing different parts of the
kingdom: but the most considerable were the two which extended from
Quito to Cuzco, and, again diverging from the capital, continued in a
southerly direction toward Chili.
One of these roads passed over the great plateau, and the other along
the lowlands on the borders of the ocean. The former was much the
more difficult achievement, from the character of the country. It was
conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were cut
for leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means
of bridges that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled
by stairways hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depths
were filled up with solid masonry; in short, all the difficulties
that beset a wild and mountainous region, and which might appall
the most courageous engineer of modern times, were encountered and
successfully overcome. The length of the road, of which scattered
fragments only remain, is variously estimated at from fifteen hundred
to two thousand miles; and stone pillars, in the manner of European
milestones, were erected at stated intervals of somewhat more than
a league, all along the route. Its breadth scarcely exceeded twenty
feet. It was built of heavy flags of freestone, and, in some parts
at least, covered with a bituminous cement, which time has made
harder than the stone itself. In some places where the ravines had
been filled up with masonry, the mountain torrents, wearing on it
for ages, have gradually eaten away through the base, and left the
superincumbent mass--such is the cohesion of the materials--still
spanning the valley like an arch.
Over some of the boldest streams it was necessary to construct
suspension bridges, as they are termed, made of the tough fibers
of the maguey, or of the osier of the country, which has an
extraordinary degree of tenacity and strength. These osiers were
woven into cables of the thickness of a man’s body. The huge ropes,
then stretched across the water, were conducted through rings or
holes cut in immense buttresses of stone raised on the opposite banks
of the river and then secured to heavy pieces of timber. Several of
these enormous cables bound together formed a bridge which, covered
with planks, well secured and defended by a railing of the same osier
materials on the sides, afforded a safe passage for the traveler.
The length of this aerial bridge, sometimes exceeding two hundred
feet, caused it, confined as it was only at the extremities, to dip
with an alarming inclination towards the center, while the motion
given to it by the passenger occasioned an oscillation still more
frightful, as his eye wandered over the dark abyss of waters that
foamed and tumbled many fathoms beneath. Yet these light and fragile
fabrics were crossed without fear by the Peruvians, and are still
retained by the Spaniards over those streams which, from the depth or
impetuosity of the current, would seem impracticable for the usual
modes of conveyance. The wider and more tranquil waters were crossed
on balsas--a kind of raft still much used by the natives--to which
sails were attached, furnishing the only instance of this higher kind
of navigation among the American Indians.
The other great road of the Incas lay through the level country
between the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different
manner, as demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the
most part low, and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a
high embankment of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet
or wall of clay; and trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along
the margin, regaling the senses of the traveler with their perfumes,
and refreshing him by their shades, so grateful under the burning
sky of the tropics. In the strips of sandy waste which occasionally
intervened, where the light and volatile soil was incapable of
sustaining a road, huge piles, many of them to be seen at this day,
were driven into the ground to indicate the route to the traveler.
All along these highways, caravansaries, or tambos, as they were
called, were erected, at the distance of ten or twelve miles from
each other, for the accommodation, more particularly of the Inca and
his suite and those who journeyed on the public business. There
were few other travelers in Peru. Some of these buildings were on
an extensive scale, consisting of a fortress, barracks, and other
military works, surrounded by a parapet of stone and covering a large
tract of ground. These were evidently destined for the accommodation
of the imperial armies when on their march across the country. The
care of the great roads was committed to the districts through
which they passed, and under the Incas a large number of hands was
constantly employed to keep them in repair. This was the more easily
done in the country where the mode of traveling was altogether on
foot; though the roads are said to be so nicely constructed that a
carriage might have rolled over them as securely as on any of the
great roads of Europe. Still in a region where the elements of fire
and water are both actively at work in the business of destruction,
they must, without constant supervision, have gradually gone to
decay. Such has been their fate under the Spanish conquerors, who
took no care to enforce the admirable system for their preservation
adopted by the Incas. Yet the broken portions that still survive here
and there, like the fragments of the great Roman roads scattered over
Europe, bear evidence to their primitive grandeur, and have drawn
forth the eulogium from a discriminating traveler, usually not too
profuse in his panegyric, that “the roads of the Incas were among the
most useful and stupendous works ever executed by man.”
The system of communication through their dominions was still further
improved by the Peruvian sovereigns by the introduction of posts,
in the same manner as was done by the Aztecs. The Peruvian posts,
however, established on all the great routes that conducted to the
capital, were on a much more extended plan than those in Mexico. All
along these routes, small buildings were erected, at the distance of
less than five miles asunder, in each of which a number of runners,
or chasquis, as they were called, were stationed to carry forward the
dispatches of government. These dispatches were either verbal, or
conveyed by means of quipus, and sometimes accompanied by a thread
of the crimson fringe worn round the temples of the Inca, which was
regarded with the same implicit deference as the signet-ring of an
Oriental despot.
The chasquis were dressed in a peculiar livery, intimating their
profession. They were all trained to the employment and selected
for their speed and fidelity. As the distance each courier had to
perform was small, and as he had ample time to refresh himself at the
stations, they ran over the ground with great swiftness, and messages
were carried through the whole extent of the long routes, at the rate
of one hundred and fifty miles a day. The office of the chasquis was
not limited to carrying dispatches. They frequently brought various
articles for the use of the court and in this way fish from the
distant ocean, fruits, game, and different commodities from the hot
regions on the coast, were taken to the capital in good condition,
and served fresh at the royal table. It is remarkable that this
important institution should have been known to both the Mexicans and
the Peruvians without any correspondence with one another and that it
should have been found among two barbarian nations of the New World
long before it was introduced among the civilized nations of Europe.
By these wise contrivances of the Incas, the most distant parts of
the long extended empire of Peru were brought into intimate relations
with each other. The while the capitals of Christendom, but a few
hundred miles apart, remained as far asunder as if seas had rolled
between them, the great capitals Cuzco and Quito were placed by the
high roads of the Incas in immediate correspondence. Intelligence
from the numerous provinces was transmitted on the wings of the wind
to the Peruvian metropolis, the great focus to which all the lines
of communication converged. Not an insurrectionary movement could
occur, not an invasion on the remotest frontier, before the tidings
were conveyed to the capital and the imperial armies were on their
march across the magnificent roads of the country to suppress it. So
admirable was the machinery contrived by the American despots for
maintaining tranquillity throughout their dominions! It may remind us
of the similar institutions of ancient Rome, when, under the Caesars,
she was mistress of half the world.
Hiram Bingham, Director of the Geographic Society-Yale Peruvian
Expedition[15] gives an interesting description of the tracing out of
two of these old roads. Evidently the trail was mostly used by foot
passengers, or possibly llamas, for there were frequently steep grades
and flights of steps and open ravines which had more than likely been
crossed by the osier suspension bridges. No doubt much commerce beside
fertilizer from the great nitrate beds was carried on over these roads.
=Conclusion.=--If the story, very briefly given, of these old roads
does not verify the thesis that transportation is a measure of
civilization, a view might be taken of the tribes and peoples now
living in the various parts of the earth. If the character of the
transportation of the tribes of Africa and of Asia, of the Arctic and
Antarctic regions, the least civilized now known, be compared with
that of those nations considered most civilized, the same general
conclusion would be drawn. Compare the railways, canals, highways,
cars, automobiles, ships, and aircraft of the present-day United States
with the pack animals and ox-carts of many less favored nations and
the further evidence of amount of traffic and travel per person, will
be unnecessary to establish the relative states of civilization. It
is not necessary even to go beyond the confines of the great American
Republic. Writers who traveled through it in the ’forties, ’fifties
and ’sixties are wont to call attention to the uncouthness of the
inhabitants, to the lack of the refinements of speech and manners
characterizing those who dwelt in the more populous communities. But
the honesty, integrity, generosity, willingness, and ability of the
American pioneers to dare and to do, were unquestioned. It is a pity
that many of the best traits of humanity disappear when people are
crowded into cities, when their wants and desires are increased, when
the refinements of civilization have replaced the ruggedness of pioneer
life. Then, as now, upon the action of a bare majority, which in a
republic is called “the will of the people,” often hung the political,
social and financial destiny of the nation. A slight change would have
changed the course of civilizing evolution; who knows whether for good
or ill. As the _trivium_ and _quadrivium_ were the roads, believed by
the ancients to lead to a liberal education, so the government and the
civilization of this now great nation has rested consecutively in its
upward progress, upon the slender path of the aborigine, swelled to
the well defined trail of the pack-train, broadened into the cart and
wagon road, cast up into a turnpike; and upon the rippling trace of the
light canoe, the dugout, the keel-boat, the pole-boat, the flat-boat,
the canal-boat and the steam-boat; all to be supplanted by the thunder
of the locomotive. What in the process of evolution will follow it? The
automobile, the truck, the flying machine? Time alone can tell.
SELECTED REFERENCES
DAVIS, WILLIAM STEARNS, “The Influence of Wealth on Imperial Rome,”
pp. 85-105. The Macmillan Company, New York.
ELY, RICHARD T., “Outlines of Economics,” The Macmillan Co., New
York. Chapter III.
Encyclopaedia Britannica. Articles on the “Steam Engine,” “Yarn,”
“Weaving,” and “Railway.”
GREEN, JOHN RICHARD, “History of the English People,” Book IX,
Chapter III.
HAVELL, H. L., “Republican Rome,” p. 112, Harrap & Co., London, 1914.
HEITLAND, W. E., “The Roman Republic,” University Press, Cambridge.
LIVY, TITUS, “History of Rome,” Translated by William A. M’Devitte,
Book IX, Chap. 29; XXII, 15; XXIV, 8; George Bell & Sons, London,
1890.
MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, “The History of England,” Vol. I, Chapter
III.
MOMMSEN, PROFESSOR THEODOR, “The History of the Roman Republic,”
Abridgment by Bryans and Hendy, pp. 95, 97, 98, 108, 175, 219, 251,
318, 319, 320. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1893.
MORLEY, S. T., “Excavations at Quirigua, Guatemala,” _The National
Geographic Magazine_, March, 1913.
Account of explorations made in Peru by a joint expedition of Yale
University and The National Geographic Society in _The National
Geographic Magazine_, April, 1913, February, 1915, and May, 1916.
NIEBUHR, B. G., “Lectures on Ancient History,” Vol. III, p. 156;
“Lectures on the History of Rome,” Vol. III, p. 229. Taylor, Walton &
Maberly, London, 1852.
OSBORN, HENRY F., “Men of the Old Stone Age.” C. Scribner’s Sons, New
York, 1915.
PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H., “Conquest of Peru,” 2 Vol., Vol. I, pp. 62-67,
J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1869.
SANDS, W. F., “Mysterious Temples of the Jungle,” in _The National
Geographic Magazine_, March, 1913.
SELFRIDGE, H. GORDON, “The Romance of Commerce,” John Lane, London.
STANLEY, HENRY M., “In Darkest Africa” (two volumes). C. Scribner’s
Sons, New York.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “Outlines of Economics,” by Richard T. Ely. The Macmillan Co., N.
Y.
[2] See “The Man of the Stone Age,” by H. F. Osborne.
[3] “In Darkest Africa” (two volumes), by Henry M. Stanley. Charles
Scribner’s Sons, New York.
[4] “The Romance of Commerce,” by H. Gordon Selfridge. John Lane,
London.
[5] Quoted by Ely in “Outlines of Economics.” Macmillan, New York.
[6] “The History of England,” by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Chapter
III.
[7] “History of the English People,” by John Richard Green, Paragraph
1527.
[8] It is well to note that Watt in his application for a patent on
steam engines granted in 1769 also laid claim for a rotary engine.
The rotary engine has been lately developed into the steam turbine.
[9] “Germany and Austria-Hungary were increasingly convinced that in
the further disintegration of the old Turkish Empire they must be
recognized in an exceptional way and must be allowed ... to acquire
an undisputed influence from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and the
Persian Gulf.”--Albert Shaw in the introduction to Simonds’ “History
of the World War.” Also see map Vol. II, p. 346.
[10] From the report of a lecture at Shreveport, La., 1905, by B. H.
Carroll, Professor of History, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.
[11] Lecture delivered at Shreveport, La., by B. H. Carroll, Ph.D.,
Professor of History, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, later U. S.
Consul at Naples.
[12] “The Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome,” by William Stearns
Davis, The Macmillan Company, N. Y., pp. 95-105.
[13] See “Mysterious Temples of the Jungle,” by W. F. Sands, and
“Excavations at Quirigua, Guatemala” by S. T. Morley. _The National
Geographic Magazine_, March, 1913.
[14] See several excellent articles with illustrations on the
explorations made in Peru by a joint expedition of Yale University
and The National Geographic Society in _The National Geographic
Magazine_, April, 1913, February, 1915, and May, 1916.
[15] _Geographic Magazine_, May, 1916.
CHAPTER II
TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES; EARLY TRAILS AND ROADS
The early settlements of this country were made upon the shores,
naturally, because the settlers were brought by ships from Europe and
supplies of various sorts were from time to time renewed by ships. The
settlers were not skilled in the art of living on the country as were
the natives and when supply vessels failed to put in their appearance
there was real hardship in and sometimes entire extermination of the
colonists. The penetration of settlement to the interior was slow and
even to times within the memory of men now living much of the interior
was an unknown wilderness.
=The Birch Bark Canoe.=--Travel from place to place was at first
insignificant and what little there was was carried on by walking,
horseback riding, or by boat. Settlement, which had begun on the ocean
or at the head of ocean navigation on inlets or rivers, was eventually
pushed farther inland. The rivers and other waterways being at hand
were utilized; the birch-bark canoe, the dugout, and the plank boat,
furnished the principal vehicles of transportation. The Indians were
very expert in the manufacture and operation of light birch-bark
canoes. Longfellow in “Hiawatha” gives a poetical description of this:
With his knife the tree he girdled;
Just beneath its lowest branches,
Just above the roots he cut it,
Till the sap came oozing outward;
Down the trunk from top to bottom,
Sheer he cleft the bark asunder,
With a wooden wedge he raised it
Stripped it from the trunk unbroken.
Then he explains how the framework is made of cedar:
Like two bows he framed and shaped them,
Like two bended bows together.
After which they were tied together and the bark fastened to the frame
by fibrous roots of the larch, then Hiawatha
Took the resin of the fir tree
Smeared therewith each seam and fissure,
Made each crevice safe from water.
The aborigine paddled this frail bark so skillfully that the noise of
rowing was scarcely audible or the waves visible. And when he came to
the headwaters of the stream he was able to raise the light craft above
his head and follow the dim trail across the lower lying hills to the
stream beyond the water-shed leading in the opposite direction.
The white man, profiting by the Red Man’s experience learned to
build these boats, as well as heavier ones of logs and timber
for transporting goods, and utilized the same trails to push his
civilization farther into the unknown.
=Meagerness of Early Roads.=--In the “History of Travel”[16] Mr. Dunbar
quotes from a document in the New York Historical Society’s collection,
written by Benjamin Fletcher, Governor of His Majesty’s Province of New
York, and dated 1694, which shows the lack of roadways or even passable
trails in northern New York: “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 ye Lake, ye land on each side
being extream steep and Rocky mountains or els a meer cumbered with
underwood, where men can not goe upright, but must creep throu Bushes
for whole days’ marches, and impossible for horses to goe at any time
of ye year.”
The same author quotes from a letter by Deputy Governor Hinkley of
Plymouth Colony, about 1680, asking the English Government for favors
because this Colony was “the first that broke the ice, and underwent
ye brunt, at our own charge, for the enlargement of his Majestie’s
dominions in this heretofore most howling wilderness, amidst wild
Indians and wild beasts.”
In Massachusetts,[17] on the other hand, it is stated that while
communication was usually by water one writer boasts that “the wild and
uncouth woods were filled with frequented ways and the large rivers
were overlaid with bridges, passable both for horse and foot.” But
notwithstanding this it was probably not before the beginning of the
sixteenth century that any very serious attempts were made even to
widen the trails so that wagon traffic was possible. In 1754[18] four
days were needed to go from Boston to New York by stage, and three days
more to go to Philadelphia. Twelve years later it required the “Flying
Machine” two days to make the trip between New York and Philadelphia.
=Settlement Follows Waterways; Portages.=--The opening up for
settlement of new territory necessitated means of communication. That
near waterways was most easily reached and most easily kept within
reach of older settlements and was, therefore, naturally first taken up
and occupied. To penetrate farther the interior made it necessary to
cross from one water system to another. As necessity arose the trails
were widened into roads and often at these portages were established
forts and villages for protection against the natives and to facilitate
trade. Villages grew into towns and towns into cities. Portages became
known and were talked about just as railroad lines were later.[19] To
go from the region near New York the Hudson River was available to the
watershed near Lake George, where there was a 15-mile portage guarded
by Forts Edward on the Hudson and William Henry on Lake George. After
traversing Lake George there was another portage to Lake Champlain
guarded by Fort Ticonderoga. These names are often mentioned in the
histories of the French and Indian and of the Revolutionary wars.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE NORTH-EASTERN PORTION OF THE UNITED STATES
SHOWING PORTAGES
Showing the Location of Well-known Portages. There Were Other Portages
Wherever Two Water Courses Came Near to Each Other. (See Farrand:
“American Nation,” Vol. I, and Thwaites, Ib. Vol. VII.)]
The Oneida portage, leading from the Mohawk, a tributary of the Hudson,
to Wood Creek thence by the Oswego River furnished a way to Ontario and
the other Great Lakes. A portage around Niagara Falls is now supplanted
by the Welland Canal.
=Lines of Travel.=--To reach the Ohio Valley travelers might go by
way of the north along the routes just mentioned to the Great Lakes,
thence to the interior of Ohio, or they could leave the Mohawk and
portage across to the upper waters of the Allegheny. The Indians gave
trouble along these lines, so a more southerly route was often taken.
Some of these, commencing on the north, were: Up the Susquehanna to
its headwaters, portage to one or the other of tributaries which flow
into the Allegheny near Kittanning; leave the Susquehanna and go up the
Juniata and portage over to the Conemaugh, thence to the Allegheny--a
course partly occupied now by the Pennsylvania railroad; or, by way
of the Potomac, and Wills Creek, then across the Youghiogheny, and
Monongahela. Several other trails crossed the Alleghanies. A trail
through southern Pennsylvania called occasionally Nemacolin’s Path
afterward formed the line of Braddock’s Road, hastily constructed for
military purposes during the French and Indian War, and over which
Braddock’s unfortunate expedition traveled. Still farther south there
was a well-known trail often followed by the Cherokee Indians, by
trappers, hunters, traders, and missionaries desirous of reaching the
lands beyond the mountains. Skirting the north end of the Blue Ridge
range the traveler followed up the Shenandoah to near the present
town of Staunton, thence across the ridges to the headwaters of the
James, thence to upper tributaries of the New River, then by crossing
a few more ridges to the Holston River, thence into the bountiful
hunting grounds of Tennessee. The Cherokee Indians were jealous of
this territory and as far as possible kept it closed to the settler.
Therefore the country beyond the Alleghanies was not well known to the
Virginia colonists, even up to 1800. True, records of Dougherty, a
trader, who had visited the Indian tribes in this region as early as
1690 were known, and another (Adair) in 1730, and still others after
1740. Glowing reports were brought back by the few traders, hunters,
trappers, and occasional talkative Indians, who had visited those
regions of magnificent rivers, vast woods, and extended prairies. The
wild beasts with which this fertile country abounded were likened to
the leaves on the trees, they were so abundant. Even the great Ohio
River was but a tributary of a larger river of which they had no
definite information. The trip, in the language of the Indian, from the
headwaters of the Holston (Hogo higee) to the Wabash (Ohio) required
for its performance “two paddles, two warriors, three moons.”[20]
These glowing descriptions only whetted the adventurous appetite and
soon such hardy pioneers as Daniel Boone and his comrades sought this
territory where they could live near to nature and be freed from high
taxes. There was also a well-worn trail from Philadelphia, east of
the Cherokee (Shenandoah) through Virginia to the Yadkin, from which
travelers could diverge at various points and reach the Cherokee trail
or go on through Cumberland Gap farther to the west.
=Trails from the North.=--Traders from Virginia who reached far out in
Tennessee and Kentucky found competition from those who came down by
one of the several routes from the Great Lakes or up from the lower
Mississippi. A route left Lake Erie at what is now Cleveland, passed
up the Cuyahoga, portaged across to a tributary of the Ohio, then
into Kentucky; another left the Lake at Sandusky, followed the Miami,
crossed to the Scioto, thence down to the Ohio, across Kentucky to
Cumberland Gap, sometimes called the Scioto trail and farther south the
Warrior’s Trail.
As western territory settled, trails and roads became more numerous.
Readers desiring further detailed information are referred to Hurlbert,
Thwaites, Dunbar, and Farrand.[21] A few other routes, however,
should be mentioned on account of the importance they assumed in the
settlement of the nation.
=Boone’s Trace, or The Wilderness Road.=--This road is said to be the
first road built into the wilderness for the purpose of encouraging
settlement and development. In the late years of the nineteenth century
it was no uncommon thing for a railroad to precede settlement, but at
the beginning of the eighteenth century roads were, in America, made
largely for military purposes or where demanded by the traffic of
earlier settlement.
Daniel Boone, the noted hunter and explorer, had several times left his
home in North Carolina to hunt and travel in the wilds of Kentucky. He
brought back to the eastern side of the mountains glowing descriptions.
These excited the cupidity of a friend, a judge and prominent citizen
of North Carolina, James[22] Henderson. Henderson employed Boone to
confer with the Cherokee Indians who claimed this territory for the
sale of their rights. Boone sought out the Indians and by means now
unknown got them to agree to sell. The fact that they were persuaded
to dispose of their great hunting grounds shows what influence Boone
had among them. It has been intimated that the chiefs realized the
futility of further fighting the white settler or that the Cherokees
felt they had no real right to this land as it had been rather held as
neutral territory among several tribes. However, as soon as they had
given their pledge Boone is said to have gone immediately to Henderson,
who repaired at once to Fort Watauga on a branch of the Holston in
North Carolina, where he met 1200 natives in council and completed
the deal in the name of the Transylvania Company. The main opposition
came from an eloquent and powerful chief named Dragging Canoe,[23] who
was able to disrupt proceedings the first day. After his speech the
council broke up in confusion. The next day, however, the Indians again
went into council and the treaty was ratified. Estimates of the price
paid range from “ten wagon loads of cheap goods and whiskey,” to “the
equivalent of ten thousand pounds sterling.”[24]
As soon as the deal was consummated Boone, employed by Henderson, began
the marking and cutting out of a road from Watauga, North Carolina, to
Boonesborough, Kentucky. The party numbered about forty men, consisting
of colored men to care for the camp duties and the necessary pack
animals and a body of woodsmen with axes. Boone went ahead and blazed
the way by chopping notches in the sides of trees along the way, the
axmen following cleared away the underbrush and felled and removed such
trees as stood in the way. However, as it was easier to detour than to
chop, usually only small trees were cut. It was not intended that this
should be a wagon road, as wagons had but just made their appearance in
this region. However, it was to be an easily followed way for future
settlers. In Boone’s Autobiography, dictated to John Filson, the matter
of the road is referred to thus:
After the conclusion of which (a campaign against the Shawanese
Indians which Boone commanded by order of Governor Dunmore), the
militia was discharged from each garrison, and I, being relieved from
my post, was solicited by a number of North Carolina gentlemen, that
were about purchasing the lands lying on the north side of Kentucky
River, from the Cherokee Indians, to attend their treaty at Wataga,
in March, 1755, to negotiate with them, and mention the boundaries
of the purchase. This I accepted; and, at the request of the same
gentlemen, undertook to mark out a road in the best passage from the
settlement through the wilderness to Kentucky, with such assistance
as I thought necessary to employ for such an important undertaking.
I soon began this work, having collected a number of enterprising
men, well armed. We proceeded with all possible expedition until we
came within fifteen miles of where Boonesborough now stands, and
where we were fired upon by a party of Indians, that killed two, and
wounded two of our number; yet, although surprised and taken at a
disadvantage, we stood our ground. This was the 20th of March, 1775.
Three days after, we were fired upon again, and had two men killed
and three wounded. Afterwards we proceeded on to Kentucky River
without opposition; and on the 1st of April began to erect the fort
of Boonesborough at a salt lick, about sixty yards from the river on
the south side.
A letter from Captain Boone to Colonel Henderson is quoted by Peck
in his life of Boone, relating to this same enterprise, which shows
the dangerous nature of the work and that even Boone seemed somewhat
worried over the matter:
Dear Colonel: After my compliments to you, I shall acquaint you with
our misfortune. On March the 25th a party of Indians fired on my
company about half an hour before day, and killed Mr. Twitty and his
negro, and wounded Mr. Walker very deeply but I hope he will recover.
On March the 28th, as we were hunting for provisions, we found Samuel
Tate’s son, who gave us an account that the Indians fired on their
camp on the 27th day. My brother and I went down and found two men
killed and scalped, Thomas McDowell and Jeremiah McPeters. I have
sent a man down to all the lower companies in order to gather them
all to the mouth of Otter Creek. 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 the case. This day we start from the
battle-ground for the mouth of Otter Creek, where we will immediately
erect a fort, which will be done before you can come or send; then
we can send ten men to meet you if you send for them.
I am sir, your most obedient,
DANIEL BOONE.
N. B.--We stood on the ground and guarded our baggage till day, and
lost nothing. We have about fifteen miles to Cantuck at Otter Creek.
The road began “at the settlements,” which were probably in what are
now Sullivan and Hawkins counties. Tennessee, but mostly along the
Watauga River, then thought to be a part of Virginia. The road was a
continuation of the Cherokee trail through the mountains. This trail
served the great migration following the Revolutionary War in Tennessee
and Kentucky. From the settlements there is a westerly course to the
Holston River at Long Island near the site of old Long Island Fort
constructed by Colonel Bird to winter his army during the French and
Indian War in 1758. At this place he received some reinforcements and
then continued in a generally westward direction through country he
was more or less familiar with to the Clinch River, then across the
ridge to the Powell River, and finally to Cumberland Gap, through which
he entered the land of “Kentucke.” Here he arrived at the Warrior’s
Trail leading northward, so called because Kentucky had been a sort
of neutral hunting grounds of the Indians from the North, the Miamis,
Shawnees, Wyandots, and others and of the Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas,
and others, from the South. Nevertheless the Indians from the South
habitually crossed over and fought those from the North and vice versa,
hence a large and much frequented trail.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING MAIN HIGHWAYS AND WATERWAYS IN UNITED STATES
ABOUT 1830
When the Railroads Entered the Industrial Arena, the Country Was Being
Covered With a Net Work of Highways. (Based on Tanner’s Map of 1825 and
Turner in “American Nation,” Vol. XIV.)]
Boone appropriated this native route for a distance of about 50 miles
to near the present town of Manchester in Clay County. Here he found
a “street” made by the buffalo, which were wont to travel through the
cane-brakes about five or six abreast, thus with their thousands of
hoofs breaking and hardening a way wide enough for a team and wagon.
Turning west he followed the bisons’ street to Rock Castle River,
then turned northward again to the Kentucky River and the site of
Boonesborough. A fort was here erected by placing stout log cabins with
heavy stockades between about a rectangular space some 150 x 260 feet.
A pair of strong wooden gates furnished ingress and egress. Several
times was this fort attacked by Indians, the last time in 1778, by
nearly 500 warriors, but always, because of the block houses at the
corners with their loop-holes and the heavy barricades, also with loop
holes, they were able to withstand the attacks and finally repulse the
Indians.
The first legislature of the Transylvania Republic, as Henderson’s
scheme came to be known, was held here. Boone was a member, as was
Harrod from Harrodstown, and other early settlers of Kentucky.
There is no doubt but that this highway and blockhouse fort were of
great assistance in settling and developing the country of Kentucke.
=Calk’s Diary.=--One of the first parties to make use of Boone’s Trace
was that of Henderson in response to Boone’s letter heretofore quoted.
A naïve diary kept by one of its members, William Calk, is still in
existence. It has been made available by the publications of the
Filson Club. Speed[25] and Dunbar[26] quote it extensively. Theodore
(afterward President) Roosevelt[27] says “the writer’s mind was
evidently as vigorous as his language was terse and untrammeled.” While
spelling, capitalization, and punctuation may not conform to the best
modern style it must be remembered that in those early days there were
no public schools. A few private schools were taught by more or less
shiftless school teachers, but the man who could read and write at all
was fortunate. Boone’s schooling, of a very meager nature, closed when
he and some of his schoolmates exchanged the teacher’s whisky bottle
for a similar one doped with tartar emetic. The sick teacher made a
“rough house” with Boone and his companions but was finally knocked
down and the school dismissed.
To return to William Calk’s diary. It is a sort of log or running
account of the trip and events from day to day as they impressed
him, from its beginning March 13, 1775, in Prince William County,
Virginia, till he arrives at Boonesborough. It is certainly a very good
commentary on the early travel conditions. A few of the entries are:
1775, Mon. 13th--I set out from prince wm. to travel to Caintuck on
tursday Night our company all got together at Mr. Priges on rapadon
which was Abraham hanks phipip Drake Eanock Smith Robert Whitledge
and myself thiar Abrahms Dogs leg got broke by Drakes Dog.
Wednesday, 15th--We started early from priges made a good days travel
and lodge this night at Mr. Cars on North fork James River.
So he continues with his daily items. It may be interesting to note that
Wedns 22nd--We start early and git to foart Chissel whear we git some
good loaf bread and good whiskey.
On “fryday 24th” they turned out of the main wagon road in order to
go to “Danil Smiths” on the Clinch River, where they arrived Saturday
evening and very hard traveling they found it through the mountains.
Those who have had experience with pack animals in the timber will
relish this incident which occurred soon after the few days’ sojourn at
Smith’s.
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
little way I turned my hors to drive before me and he got scard ran
away threw Down the Saddle 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 turrable flustration amongst the Reast of the Horses Drakes
mair run against a sapling and nocht it down we cacht them all again
and went on and loged at John Duncans.
They “suplyed” themselves with bacon and meal at “Dunkan’s.” This was
their last chance to get provisions other than the game afforded by
the country. They found this a “verey Bad hilley way.” Were mired in
the mud, fell in the water and got their loads wet. Since they turned
off to go to Smith’s they had been traveling unbroken or dim trails; on
“mond 3rd” after traveling the woods without any track they “git into
hendersons Road,” that is the trail which Boone had recently blazed
for the Transylvania Company. On “Tuesday 4th” they overtook “Col.
henderson and his company Bound for Caintuck,” at Capt. Martin’s where
“they were Broiling and Eating Beef without Bread.” They now formed a
company of about “40 men and some neagros.”
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.
News of the depredations of the Indians frightened many and caused them
to turn back. The Henderson party were able to pursuade some of these
to remain. On the 9th they met “another Companey going Back they tell
such News abram and Drake is afraid to go aney farther there we camp
this night.”
However, after many hardships, swollen streams over which they
must sometimes swim their horses, “obliged to toat” the packs over
themselves, they arrived at their destination. Once “Abrams mair Ran
into the River with her load and swam over” he followed her and “got
on her and made her swim back again.” He mentions occasionally Killing
game: one “Eavening two Deer,” another day a “beef,” and again “2
bofelos.” The writer was evidently disgusted with the uncleanly and
unsanitary Drake, whose dog is mentioned in the first entry, for he
notes that “Mr. Drake Bakes Bread without washing his hands,” which
evidently was unusual in even these frontier times.
After arriving at “Boones foart” they drew “for chois of lots;” some as
will always happen were dissatisfied. This small company, however, must
have decided to accept the verdict of chance for Calk writes:
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 Bigin houseKeeping Eanock Smith Robert
Whitledge and myself.
Thus ends this interesting journal kept under difficult conditions
when ordinary men would have considered it useless labor to make such
a record. There is no doubt but that Boone’s Wilderness Road and
Boone’s Fort were both very instrumental in the settlement of Kentucky
and Tennessee. The territory of Kentucky was separated from Virginia
in 1786 and admitted to the union as a state in 1790, when it had a
population, by U. S. Census, of 73,077.
=Marquette’s Explorations.=--Religious devotion and zeal has done much
for the settlement of North America: the Puritans in New England, the
Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Catholics in Maryland and Canada, and very
much later the Mormons in Utah are familiar examples. A French Jesuit
missionary, Jacques Marquette, who with another, Claude Bablon, had
founded (1668) a settlement at St. Mary’s on the falls between Lakes
Superior and Huron, said to be the first French settlement within the
present boundaries of the United States, had made friends with the
Illinois Indians and learned their language. He also collected the
remains of the Huron tribes at St. Ignace and established a mission
there (1671). Marquette had heard from the Indians many tales of the
Great river to the west, and decided to explore the region along its
borders, despite their assertion of great dangers, that its warriors
never spared the stranger, and that monsters would devour both men
and canoes. Traveling with his company up the Fox River from Green
Bay he crossed the portage, which still retains the name “Portage,”
to the headwaters of the Wisconsin. With the explorer Joliet and five
subordinates as companions, he boldly embarked upon the Wisconsin and
floated down its course, knowing not where it would lead nor what
dangers might be in store. After seven days of solitary travel they
floated with inexpressible joy on the broad bosom of the Mississippi,
June 17, 1673. They continued their lonely voyage along its placid
waters until they reached the mouth of the Moingona, where were seen
evidences of habitation. Fourteen miles in the interior was a native
village. They said they were received most friendly with a calumet,
invited into their dwellings, and feasted. They explained their
religious doctrines and were sent away with the gift of a calumet or
peace pipe embellished with the heads and necks of various colored
bright and beautiful birds.
They sailed along their solitary way and were soon rewarded by hearing
the rush of the swifter, more turbulent, muddy waters of the Missouri,
which seemed from thereon to enhance the speed of the current. They
went on past the mouths of the Ohio and the Arkansas, where they found
savages who spoke a new tongue and were armed with guns, proof that
they had trafficked with the Spaniards from the Gulf of Mexico, or
with the English from Virginia. These exhibiting hostility which was
only allayed by the peace pipe, they retreated and sailed back up the
river. When Marquette reached the Illinois he entered and ascended that
river where he beheld the magnificent fertility and coloring inuring
to the late summer and early autumn of the extensive plains and vast
wooded tracts of Illinois. An easy portage brought him to the Chicago
River, a short stream whose waters are now reversed and flow into the
Illinois. Some authorities claim Marquette to have been the first white
man to set foot upon the site of Chicago (1673). Others[28] state that
the French Jesuit Nicholas Perrot and his party of fur traders pitched
their tent on its prairies the latter part of 1669.
To Marquette, however, belongs the honor of discovering two very
important routes to the Mississippi Valley; the one by way of the
Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, and the other by way of the Illinois.
Unfortunately the hardships of this journey undermined his health and
the next year (1674) a half hour after he had retired for devotion to
a small altar of stones on the banks of a little stream now called by
his name, he was found dead. Thus judged by the extent and value of the
territory traversed, passed away, at the early age of thirty-one, one
of our country’s greatest explorers.
=The Lewis and Clark Expedition.=--Another exploring expedition sought
a path to extend the commerce of the United States in the far Oregon
country. The great Rocky Mountain ranges precluded direct approach. The
idea had evidently fastened itself upon Thomas Jefferson, even before
he became president, that the Missouri River might be made the highway
across the continent, and that trade and commerce thus engendered would
inure to the benefit of the country. Also being a highly educated man,
he was deeply interested in extending the geographical and biological
knowledge of this vast region even though no remuneration to the
nation might come therefrom. Furthermore, it is possible, he desired
to secure the territories beyond the Rockies as a part of the country,
but he was too shrewd to make plain statements to that effect. His
shrewdness and the business sagacity of Livingston, minister to France,
coupled with the financial straits of Napoleon resulted in obtaining
an extensive portion of the country without which the United States
could not have developed into a strong well-bound nation reaching from
coast to coast. Whether Mr. Jefferson would have attempted to take this
country by force matters not now. The fact that the Lewis and Clark
military expedition was ready to start almost as soon as the purchase
was made, lends suspicion to that idea. The nomination of Monroe to
be Minister to France, the man whom Jefferson expected to conduct the
Louisiana negotiations, and who arrived in France just in time to see
them completed by Livingston, was made January 11, 1803; while the
message proposing the expedition was submitted January 18; the treaty
of cession for the purchase was signed May 2; and during that same
month the expedition which had previously organized left its winter
quarters about a day’s journey from St. Louis, and proceeded up the
Missouri River. The expedition consisted of forty-five persons in three
boats, one a flat boat decked over at the ends and two pirogues[29]
together with a number of horses which were to be driven along the
bank for the use of the hunters. The personnel consisted of the two
officers, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant (by courtesy Captain)
William Clark, both of whom were from families already distinguished
in border service; twenty-seven men who expected to make the entire
journey; seven soldiers and nine voyageurs who were to go only to the
Mandan villages of the Missouri, where the party would winter. Of the
twenty-seven permanent members one was a half-breed hunter who would
also act as interpreter, two were French voyageurs, and one a negro
servant of Clark. All, except the black slave, were enlisted in the
army that discipline might be secured. Their progress was necessarily
slow and a full account of it reads like a romance. They of course had
to live off the country as they proceeded. There was no roadway along
the river, often the brush was thick and the grass high; the river with
its turbulent waters, snags, and sand bars made navigation difficult;
flies and mosquitoes, those pests of bottom and marshy land, were
abundant. They had some trouble with the Sioux Indians, but Captains
Lewis and Clark were evidently able to cope with them successfully.
They reached a point near the present site of Bismarck, N.D., that
summer. This region was occupied by the Mandan Indians, who lived in
villages of rather permanent character. Among these they found some
who had traveled far toward the headwaters of the Missouri. One woman,
known as the Bird Woman, was especially helpful to them. She had been
captured some time previously from a mountain tribe and according
to Indian custom married to one of their own number, a half breed.
During the stay at winter quarters, in addition to writing up their
journals and records very carefully, they cultivated the acquaintance
of this woman. She, with her half breed husband and small child,
accompanied the expedition when it began its onward journey in the
spring of 1805. There was real need for them not only to act as guides
and interpreters, but to replace those who had been sent back down the
river with reports of the progress and observations of the expedition
up to this time. Part of the duties of the expedition, as heretofore
intimated, was to note the character and productivity of the land, as
well as the nature and number of Indians found and general information
concerning them and their mode of living.
When the falls of the Missouri were reached there seemed to be an
_impasse_. But from logs and other timbers found there they constructed
a crude wagon on which their supplies and equipment were transported
to the river above. They had brought with them the iron framework of a
smaller boat than those used heretofore with the idea of covering it
with stretched skins. They found difficulty, however, in getting it
watertight. They attempted to get pitch by heating pine tree trunks
but were again unsuccessful. They resorted finally to a combination of
powdered charcoal, beeswax, and buffalo tallow--practically natural
products of the land. The boat floated nicely and they were greatly
encouraged but when it was taken from the water the mixture dropped
off and the seams opened up. Lewis finally gave up the attempt and
buried the framework and built canoes according to the Indian fashion.
In passing up they came to forks in the river and were often at a loss
which to take. By conference with the Indian woman and reports of
scouts sent ahead they were usually fortunate in choosing the right
course. Being explorers of a new country they assigned names to the
rivers as they discovered them. At three forks, they called the rivers,
Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson, names which they still retain. Three
branches of the Jefferson were Philosophy, Philanthropy, and Wisdom;
these names have not remained--probably they were too fanciful--the
Philanthropy is now the odoriferous Stinking Water.
They followed up the Jefferson until it became too shallow and
precipitous to navigate longer. Lewis started out overland into the
interior hoping to find an Indian habitation and someone who would
guide him to waters flowing Pacificward. Game, which had been very
abundant practically all the way, was here scarce and the company were
often hungry, and very likely despondent. After arduous and weary
wandering Lewis came across an old Indian woman and some girls. They
were afraid of him and bowed their heads for execution. Instead he
gave them trinkets and face paint. The men of the tribe having come up
he with difficulty persuaded them to go with him to the river where
the “Bird Woman” who had come with them from the Mandan village was
recognized as the sister of the chief of the band with which Lewis had
fortunately come in contact.
Their food up to this time, which was mostly meat, was easily supplied
from the numerous herds of buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope; from
flocks of wild fowl, and prairie chickens; and from several varieties
of fish found in the waters. “On the return voyage, when Clark was
descending the Yellowstone River, a vast herd of buffalo, swimming and
wading, plowed its way across the stream where it was a mile wide, in
a column so thick that explorers had to draw up on shore and wait for
an hour, until it passed by, before continuing their journey.”[30]
They frequently found hungry wolves, grizzly bears, and rattlesnakes
which gave them more or less trouble, but they complained mostly of the
mosquitoes.
But now having left the open country they found game very scarce.
The Indians occasionally brought them a Rocky Mountain sheep but
they themselves claim never to have seen one alive. After a short
exploration in the region of the headwaters of the Jefferson they
decided to continue toward the west. So purchasing ponies from the
Indians and cacheing most of their goods went on until the rivers
were again passable for boats, where making new canoes they again
took to the waters and voyaged to the mouth of the Columbia. Hunger
harassed them, while rapids and whirlpools made their downward travel
very disagreeable. The Indians on the lower reaches were generally
friendly but their food consisted largely of dog meat, which at first
was nauseating; however, after awhile they became reconciled to the
Indians’ favorite dish.
The party wintered on the coast at a post they named Fort Clatsch. The
damp winds here were cold and raw and to persons used to active outdoor
life the winter’s enforced idleness cloyed, and they were glad when
spring came and they could turn back. The streams toward the mountains
are very swift so much of the return journey to the place where they
had left their horses with the Nez Percé Indians had to be made on
foot. Upon again securing their horses they separated at the top of the
divide, Lewis returning by way of the Missouri and Clark going by way
of the Yellowstone. Clark for a portion of the way subdivided his party
in order that the maximum territory might be explored. They met again
at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone and concluded their
expedition at St. Louis, September 23, 1806. Thus ended a marvelous
journey of three and a third years through a wilderness beset with many
dangers, inhabited by savage tribes, venomous reptiles, and ferocious
beasts; but a wilderness on the whole extremely friendly, abounding in
succulent vegetation and edible game, and endowed with a healthful and
invigorating climate. During all this time, notwithstanding hardships
and exposures, one man only had died, one had deserted and not more
than two Indians had been killed.[31] To Lewis and Clark for their
ability to handle men, for their courage, and fidelity should be given
much praise.
Upon the report of this expedition being made public very many
hunters, trappers and fur traders came to the lands beyond the
Missouri. These in turn were followed by bona-fide settlers. Soon this
country was furnishing supplies for those farther east, the great
rivers Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio being busy routes of internal
commerce. As a result of Lewis and Clark’s labors the United States was
able to lay claim to the Oregon country some years later. The door was
opened for the development of a vast empire with versatile resources
far beyond the fabled riches of the far east.
=Transcontinental Trails.=--Following the purchase of the Louisiana
territory there was, of course, an extension of settlement to the
prairies beyond the Missouri. The State of Missouri was early occupied
and became a state in 1821, but it was many years later before other
portions of the Louisiana Purchase were sufficiently settled to become
territories.[32] The settlement of these lands, together with the
opening up of Oregon and later California with its great gold rush,
created a demand for transcontinental roads. The mountain ranges
were searched for passes, possibly not so much for the purposes of
settlement as means for going to and coming from fur trading posts
which large companies established throughout the whole Rocky Mountain
region. St. Louis became the greatest fur center in the world, a
position which she probably holds still.[33] Provost, leader of
a detachment of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company (Wm. H. Ashley, of
Virginia, founder), found the South Pass by way of the Sweetwater
branch of the North Fork of the Platte River, 1823. This pass held
preëminence as a crossing through the Rockies to the great interior
basin and to the Pacific coast. Already has been mentioned the
crossing of Lewis and Clark in the North. Bridger discovered the pass
in Southern Wyoming bearing his name, about 1824. This defile though
wide enough for an army to pass through seems narrow because of its
lateral walls of red granite and metamorphic sandstone extending almost
perpendicularly from 1000 to 25,000 feet. The overland mail route prior
to the building of the Union Pacific Railroad was through this pass.
Jedediah Smith, who succeeded Ashley as head of the Rocky Mountain
Fur Company, explored practically all the region from Great Salt Lake
to the Pacific, and from San Diego to the upper Columbia River in
Canada. To him is the world indebted for its first knowledge of much
of the vast region west of Salt Lake as by other active members of
this company was revealed the sources of the Platte, the Yellowstone,
the Green and the Snake Rivers, and possible routes through the almost
impassable mountains drained by them. New England was especially
interested in the Oregon country and through men from there the
Humboldt River route was discovered.
During this same period there were being opened up trade and trade
routes with the Spanish possessions farther south. In 1822 a wagon
train was taken from Missouri to Santa Fé by a man named Beckwith to
trade for horses and mules, and trap along the way. For years St. Louis
was headquarters for many overland traders to these regions, taking
to them cloths and other manufactured goods and bringing back furs,
silver, mules, and horses.
[Illustration: TRANSCONTINENTAL TRAILS IN THE UNITED STATES]
The Oregon Trail, the Santa Fé Trail, the Spanish Trail and the Gila
Route, had become quite well known by the early ’thirties and after the
discovery of gold in California in ’forty-nine carried many people and
much traffic across the continent.
=Origin of the Oregon Trail.=--At Bellevue the Nebraska State
Historical Society erected, June 23, 1910, a monument a part of the
inscription on which reads:
Commemorative of the Astorian Expedition organized June 23, 1810, by
John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. This Expedition discovered
the Oregon Trail which spread knowledge of the Nebraska country
leading to its occupancy by white people.
John Jacob Astor’s purpose in organizing the Pacific Fur Company, a
subsidiary of the American Fur Company, was to establish himself and
American control in the already disputed Oregon country.[34] As a
result two expeditions were fitted out to go to and establish trading
posts in Oregon with a central control or main post at Astoria. One
of these expeditions went by water around Cape Horn to “carry out the
people, stores, ammunition and merchandise, requisite for establishing
a fortified trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River.” The other
“conducted by Mr. Hunt, was to proceed up the Missouri, and across the
Rocky Mountains, to the same point: exploring a line of communication
across the continent, and noting the place where interior trading posts
might be established.”[35]
The overland expedition, consisting of about sixty men with four boats
left their winter quarters in Missouri and proceeded up the river in
the spring of 1811. They deviated somewhat from Lewis and Clark’s route
by leaving the Missouri River at the mouth of the Grand River, near
where the Pacific extension of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul
railroad crosses. They seem to have gone across the country north of
the Black Hills into Wyoming to the Wind River and Wind Mountains south
of the Yellowstone Park, using present-day terms for locations; thence
a short distance to the head waters of the Snake River, a part of the
Lewis and Clark route, which with some deviations they followed to the
Columbia. At the mouth of the Columbia they met the sea party, and on
July 28, 1812, a party of six men started back with dispatches. They
wintered near Scott’s Bluff, Nebraska, having crossed the mountains
substantially along the line afterwards known as the Oregon Trail. In
the spring of 1813 they continued down the Platte to the Missouri.
This trip proved the possibility of a direct route avoiding the long
roundabout journey by way of the headwaters of the Missouri River. The
evolution of the Oregon Trail has been summarized by Albert Watkins,
Historian of the Nebraska State Historical Society, in Collections,
Vol. XVI, p. 26, as follows:[36]
The Missouri Fur Company sent an expedition of 150 men to the upper
waters of the Missouri in 1809. The powerful and ferocious Black Feet
Indians, who were the providence of the Oregon Trail, discouraged
the attempts of these men to gain permanent foothold there. Part
of them retreated and another part, headed by the intrepid Henry,
crossed the mountain divide in the fall of 1810 and established Fort
Henry on Henry’s Fork of the Snake River. This was the beginning of
the southern movement. In 1821 Pilcher, who succeeded Lisa as head
of the Missouri Fur Company, made another attempt at a foothold in
the Black Feet country, but was forced back. Ashley, leader of the
Rocky Mountain Fur Company, organized in 1822, was also beaten back
in 1823. By this time Henry was discouraged about holding on to the
upper Missouri and turned his attention to permanent exploitation
of the Green River valley. In that year Provost made the important
discovery of South Pass. In 1824, Ashley conducted an expedition
to the lower fields along the regular trail except that he went to
Council Bluff and from there west up the Platte Valley. In 1830, his
great lieutenants, Smith, Jackson and Sublette, went west with a
train of fourteen wagons--the first to go to the mountains over the
cut-off; that is, up the Little Blue valley to its head, across to
the Platte, following the river to the mountains. In 1832 Bonneville
also went over the cut-off and took a wagon train over the South
Pass, the first wagons to cross the mountains. In 1832 Nathaniel
Wyeth went over the cut-off to Oregon, but did not take wagons over
the mountainous part of the course. In 1836 Marcus Whitman, one of
the intrepid winners and founders of Oregon, went almost through
to the Columbia with a wagon, thus demonstrating and illustrating
the practicability of a transcontinental road for all purposes. The
Oregon Trail was now clearly outlined. It was thoroughly established
in 1842 by the aggressive Oregon emigration.
=The Final Trail.=--The Trail as finally adopted and used by emigrants
and freighters to Oregon in the “forties” started from Independence
and Westport (outfitting stations near the present metropolis of
Kansas City, Missouri) then followed in a general way the Kansas, Big
Blue, and Little Blue Rivers to near the Platte, crossing over to the
latter river a short distance west of the present city of Kearney. The
trail here proceeded up the South bank to the forks, and from there
up the North Fork to the Sweetwater which it followed through South
Pass. Thence it bore southwestward, westward, and northwestward to the
Snake River which was followed to a point about west of Boise where a
cutoff was made through the Blue Mountains arriving at the Columbia
River about the mouth of the Umatilla, thence down the Columbia to the
Pacific Ocean.
=Salt Lake Trail.=--Many variations of the above described trail were
in use. Travelers up the Missouri River disembarked at St. Joseph,
Nebraska City, Plattsmouth and especially at Council Bluffs. The great
Mormon trek was made from the last-named place. They reached the Platte
River west of Omaha and followed it on the north bank, paralleling the
Oregon Trail from Fort Kearney to Fort Laramie, where they crossed over
and joined with the Oregon Trail through South Pass then leaving that
trail turned south and west to Great Salt Lake.
=Later California Trail.=--A continuation of the Salt Lake route north
of Great Salt Lake and along the Humboldt River, across the desert to
near Lake Tahoe, where there was a crossing through the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, the Truckee Pass, thence to the Gold Diggings or across
California by way of the American and Sacramento Rivers, was a trail
very popular to California gold miners and was afterwards used by the
overland stage, and known as the Later California Trail.
=Santa Fé Trail.=--This road passed westward and a little south to the
Arkansas River, which it followed to Bent’s Fort (Colorado), thence up
Timpas Creek and over the Raton Pass to Las Vegas (New Mexico). Then
westward through Apache Cañon to Santa Fé. This trail was too rough
for wagon traffic, so later a route which crossed over south from the
Arkansas to the Cimarron and meeting the old trail at Las Vegas was
used.
=Gila and Spanish Trails.=--Two routes were possible from Santa Fé. One
southwestward by way of the Rio Grande and Gila Rivers into southern
California. The other took a northwesterly direction up the Chama
River, down the Dolores Valley, and across to the Grand River near
the present site of Moab, Utah. Then west to the Sevier, up which it
followed until it crossed over to the Virgin River; up this for a short
distance then turned directly south-west across the Mohave desert
toward Los Angeles. This last route received the name of Spanish Trail.
Many of these trails were difficult on account of scarcity of water
in the deserts. Descriptions of early travel over them are replete
with hardships, sickness, and deaths. Some of the graves were marked
with wooden, stone, or iron markers with names roughly chiseled, but
more received no marking whatsoever. Many travelers and settlers were
killed by the Indians; the tribes apparently becoming more hostile
as the number of whites increased until their own numbers became so
decimated they could no longer command sufficient warriors to warrant
further attacks. It would seem as though no advance in civilization is
unaccompanied by its toll of human lives.
=Era of Turnpiking.=--The need of better transportation facilities was
“borne in” on the people of the eastern part of the country long before
the west had been developed. The Indian trail, a single path,--for
they always traveled in single file--gave way to the “tote path” over
which each year the settler’s surplus crops were transported to market
on pack animals. Even if they owned wheeled vehicles the roads were
generally so bad they could not be used. However, wheeled vehicles
were not many prior to 1800. When Braddock wished to transport his
army to western Pennsylvania he called upon the colonies for wagons,
but Maryland and Virginia furnished only twenty-five. He appealed
to Franklin, who by his influence was able to secure 154 wheeled
vehicles[37] from Pennsylvania, probably the best supplied with wagons
of all the colonies.
It was the custom for communities to join together after crops were
gathered to start a caravan of packers to market.[38] A master driver
with one or two assistants could manage a pack-train of a dozen or so
horses. “Hides and peltries, ginseng, and bear’s grease” are mentioned
as articles to be bartered for salt, iron, nails, pewter plates and
dishes, and cloth and articles of clothing, although the latter were
usually made at home. The horses traveled in single file each fitted
with a natural crotch of wood for a tree. Hobbles and bells were
provided that the horses could be turned loose to graze at night.
Sometimes packs had to be taken off to be carried over streams or
through narrow defiles. Naturally, methods of transportation had much
influence on the character of the crops raised. Stock--cows, sheep,
and pigs--could be driven to market by the raiser or sold to a drover
who acted as a middleman. Farm products were concentrated by being fed
to stock or manufactured into something requiring less space. Settlers
complained that it required two bushels of grain to get one to market.
Whisky and brandy were easily made, served to concentrate the grain
and surplus fruit and always had a ready sale. When the government
placed an excise tax on it the opposition was so great as to produce an
insurrection in Pennsylvania (1794). Had there been good transportation
facilities probably there never would have been a “Whisky Rebellion.”
Sixteen gallons (two kegs) of whisky worth $1.00 per gallon east of
the Alleghanies was a horse load; whereas the same animal would only
pack about two bushels of grain worth, perhaps, 80 cents. That packing
was a business of considerable importance is shown by a statement in
“The History and Topography of Dauphin (and) Cumberland Counties (Pa.)”
quoted by Dunbar: “Sixty or seventy years ago five hundred pack horses
had been at one time in Carlisle, going thence to Shippenburg, Fort
London and further westward.” This was written in 1848.
Naturally so much traffic induced men to make packing a means of
livelihood. They became so numerous and strong that when wagons
began to take over the business of freighting they considered it
an infringement upon their vested rights. But as goods could be
transported more easily and cheaply by wagon the old had to make way
for the new. Wagon roads and at first two-wheeled then four-wheeled
vehicles began to appear. This created a demand for better roads. At
first that consisted in merely widening the packtrain trails. But
about the beginning of the nineteenth century, Tresaguet in France,
and Macadam and Telford, in Great Britain, were building broken-stone
roads which greatly changed and augmented the internal commerce and
the industry of those countries. The most populous and wealthy of the
colonies likewise began to consider the road question. A few military
roads, such as Braddock’s, had been constructed; there was a road along
the coast of Massachusetts, and some roads and bridges in the interior,
there were roads connecting the larger cities as from Boston to New
York and from New York to Philadelphia. The cities in order to retain
and extend their trade needed highways of commerce.
=Turnpike Roads.=--The construction of turnpike roads many of which
were stoned was encouraged by a number of the states, especially by
Pennsylvania. The Lancaster turnpike from Philadelphia to Lancaster
was “stoned” in 1792 by throwing on it stones of all sizes. These were
afterwards removed and stones “passing a 2-inch ring” substituted. This
is said to have been the first scientifically built hard surfaced
road in America. In 1800 Pennsylvania fostered the construction
of a system of turnpikes (toll roads), by granting franchises and
subscribing stock, which was eventually to cover the state and control
the western market. By 1828 there had been 3110 miles of chartered
turnpike in Pennsylvania costing over $8,000,000. These thousands
of miles of fine turnpike roads including many good bridges placed
Pennsylvania in the lead for internal improvements. But other states
were similarly employed. New York and New England by 1811 had chartered
317 turnpikes.[39] Virginia appropriated funds “to be used exclusively
for river improvements, canals and public highways,” in 1816. South
Carolina voted a million dollars, in 1818, to be raised in four annual
levies for similar purposes.
During these years the states were opening public roads but the only
good roads were those built by the turnpike companies, which erected
gates and collected tolls every few miles. This resulted in a higher
cost of transportation than was liked by the public who clamored for
free roads and canals. They were wanted by both the producer and the
merchant. The turnpikes were opposed to anything which would tend to
reduce their control of transportation.