The Winning of the West, Volume Three | Page 6

women, children, and cattle, and
dogged by ill-luck, might take three weeks. Ordinarily six or eight days
were sufficient. Before starting each man laid in a store of provisions
for himself and his horse; perhaps thirty pounds of flour, half a bushel
of corn meal, and three bushels of oats. There was no meat unless game
was shot. Occasionally several travellers clubbed together and carried a
tent; otherwise they slept in the open. The trail was very bad, especially
at first, where it climbed between the gloomy and forbidding cliffs that
walled in Cumberland Gap. Even when undisturbed by Indians, the trip
was accompanied by much fatigue and exposure; and, as always in
frontier travelling, one of the perpetual annoyances was the necessity
for hunting up strayed horses. [Footnote: Durrett MSS. Journal of Rev.
James Smith, 1785.]
The Travel down the Ohio.
The chief highway was the Ohio River; for to drift down stream in a
scow was easier and quicker, and no more dangerous, than to plod
through thick mountain forests. Moreover, it was much easier for the
settler who went by water to carry with him his household goods and
implements of husbandry; and even such cumbrous articles as wagons,
or, if he was rich and ambitious, the lumber wherewith to build a frame
house. All kinds of craft were used, even bark canoes and pirogues, or
dugouts; but the keel-boat, and especially the flat-bottomed scow with
square ends, were the ordinary means of conveyance. They were of all
sizes. The passengers and their live stock were of course huddled
together so as to take up as little room as possible. Sometimes the
immigrants built or bought their own boat, navigated it themselves, and
sold it or broke it up on reaching their destination. At other times they

merely hired a passage. A few of the more enterprising boat owners
speedily introduced a regular emigrant service, making trips at stated
times from Pittsburg or perhaps Limestone, and advertising the carriage
capacity of their boats and the times of starting. The trip from Pittsburg
to Louisville took a week or ten days; but in low water it might last a
month.
Numbers of the Immigrants.
The number of boats passing down the Ohio, laden with would-be
settlers and their belongings, speedily became very great. An
eye-witness stated that between November 13th and December 22d, of
1785, thirty-nine boats, with an average of ten souls in each, went
down the Ohio to the Falls; and there were others which stopped at
some of the settlements farther up the river. [Footnote: Draper MSS.,
_Massachusetts Gazette_, March 13, 1786; letter from Kentucky,
December 22, 1785.] As time went on the number of immigrants who
adopted this method of travel increased; larger boats were used, and the
immigrants took more property with them. In the last half of the year
1787 there passed by Fort Harmar 146 boats, with 3196 souls, 1371
horses, 165 wagons, 191 cattle, 245 sheep, and 24 hogs. [Footnote:
Harmar Papers, December 9, 1787.] In the year ending in November,
1788, 967 boats, carrying 18,370 souls, with 7986 horses, 2372 cows,
1110 sheep, and 646 wagons, [Footnote: _Columbian Magazine_,
January, 1789. Letter from Fort Harmar, November 26, 1788. By what
is evidently a clerical error the time is put down as one month instead
of one year.] went down the Ohio. For many years this great river was
the main artery through which the fresh blood of the pioneers was
pumped into the west.
There are no means of procuring similar figures for the number of
immigrants who went over the Wilderness Road; but probably there
were not half as many as went down the Ohio. Perhaps from ten to
twenty thousand people a year came into Kentucky during the period
immediately succeeding the close of the Revolution; but the net gain to
the population was much less, because there was always a smaller, but
almost equally steady, counter-flow of men who, having failed as
pioneers, were struggling wearily back toward their deserted eastern
homes.
Kentucky's Growth.

The inrush being so great Kentucky grew apace. In 1785 the population
was estimated at from twenty [Footnote: "Journey in the West in 1785,"
by Lewis Brantz.] to thirty thousand; and the leading towns, Louisville,
Lexington, Harrodsburg, Booneboro, St. Asaph's, were thriving little
hamlets, with stores and horse grist-mills, and no longer mere clusters
of stockaded cabins. At Louisville, for instance, there were already a
number of two-story frame houses, neatly painted, with verandahs
running the full length of each house, and fenced vegetable gardens
alongside [Footnote: "Lettres d'un cultivateur américan," St. John de
Crêve Coeur. Summer of 1784.]; while at the same time Nashville was
a town of logs, with but two houses that deserved the name, the others
being mere huts. [Footnote: