The first step of this star of empire (that concluded in 1800) barely
removed it from its initial point upon the Chesapeake. The direction
was toward the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. The government at
Washington, young as it was, knew that the Ohio River, reached from
the North by a dozen trails from the Great Lakes, and running out
into that West which even then was coveted by three nations, was of
itself a priceless possession. It was a military reason which first
set moving the Pennsylvania hotbed of immigrants. The restless tide
of humanity spread from that point according to principles as old
as the world. Having a world before them from which to choose their
homes, the men of that time sought out those homes along the easiest
lines. The first thrust of the outbound population was not along the
parallels of latitude westward, as is supposed to have been the rule,
but to the south and southeast, into the valleys of the Appalachians,
where the hills would raise corn, and the streams would carry it. The
early emigrants learned that a raft would eat nothing, that a boat ran
well down-stream. Men still clung to the seaboard region, though even
now they exemplified that great law of population which designates
the river valleys to be the earliest and most permanent centers of
population. The valleys of Virginia and Maryland caught the wealthiest
and most aristocratic of the shifting population of that day. Daniel
Boone heard the calling of the voices early, but not until long after
men had begun to pick out the best of the farming-lands of North and
South Carolina and lower Virginia. The first trails of the Appalachians
were the waterways, paths which we do not follow or parallel, but
intersect in our course when we go by rail from the Mississippi valley
to that first abiding-place of the star.
[Illustration: Early Pioneers on the Blue Ridge.]
The real mother of the West was the South. It was she who bore this
child, and it has been much at her expense that it has grown so
large and matured so swiftly. The path of empire had its head on the
Chesapeake. But let us at least be fair. New England and New York did
not first settle the West, not because the Chesapeake man was some
superhuman being, but because the rivers of New England and New York
did not run in the right direction. We may find fate, destiny, and
geography very closely intermingled in the history of this country, or
of any other. Any nation first avails itself of its geography, then at
last casts its geography aside; after that, politics.