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an association with some of their neighbors, for starting the
little caravan
‘In the fall of the year, after seeding time, every family formed
an association with some of their neighbors, for starting the
little caravan. A master driver was to be selected from among
them, who was to be assisted by one or more young men and
sometimes a boy or two. The horses were fitted out with
packsaddles, to the latter part of which was fastened a pair of
hobbles made of hickory withes,–a bell and collar ornamented
their necks. The bags provided for the conveyance of the salt
were filled with bread, jerk, boiled ham, and cheese furnished a
provision for the drivers. At night, after feeding, the horses,
whether put in pasture or turned out into the woods, were hobbled
and the bells were opened. The barter for salt and iron was made
first at Baltimore; Frederick, Hagerstown, Oldtown, and Fort
Cumberland, in succession, became the places of exchange. Each
horse carried two bushels of alum salt, weighing eighty-four
pounds to the bushel. This, to be sure, was not a heavy load for
the horses, but it was enough, considering the scanty subsistence
allowed them on the journey. The common price of a bushel of alum
salt, at an early period, was a good cow and a calf.

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‘The destinies of our country run east and west. Intercourse
between the mighty interior west and the sea coast is the great
principle of our commercial prosperity.’ These are the words of
Edward Everett in advocating the Boston and Albany Railroad. In
effect Washington had uttered those same words half a century
earlier when he gave momentum to an era filled with energetic
but unsuccessful efforts to join with the waters of the West the
rivers reaching inland from the Atlantic. The fact that American
engineering science had not in his day reached a point where it
could cope with this problem successfully should in no wise
lessen our admiration for the man who had thus caught the vision
of a nation united and unified by improved methods of
transportation.

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Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Alexandria–had relied for a while
on the deterring effect of a host of critics who warned all men
that a canal of such proportions as the Erie was not practicable,
that no State could bear the financial drain which its
construction would involve, that theories which had proved
practical on a small scale would fail in so large an undertaking,
that the canal would be clogged by floods or frozen up for half
of each year, and that commerce would ignore artificial courses
and cling to natural channels
It seems plain that the Southern rivals of New York City–
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Alexandria–had relied for a while
on the deterring effect of a host of critics who warned all men
that a canal of such proportions as the Erie was not practicable,
that no State could bear the financial drain which its
construction would involve, that theories which had proved
practical on a small scale would fail in so large an undertaking,
that the canal would be clogged by floods or frozen up for half
of each year, and that commerce would ignore artificial courses
and cling to natural channels. But the answer of the Empire State
to her rivals was the homely but triumphant cry ‘Low Bridge!’–
the warning to passengers on the decks of canal boats as they
approached the numerous bridges which spanned the route. When
this cry passed into a byword it afforded positive proof that the
Erie Canal traffic was firmly established. The words rang in the
counting-houses of Philadelphia and out and along the Lancaster
and the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh turnpikes–’Low Bridge! Low
Bridge!’ Pennsylvania had granted, it has been pointed out, that
her Southern neighbors might have their share of the Ohio Valley
trade but maintained that the splendid commerce of the Great
Lakes was her own peculiar heritage. Men of Baltimore who had
dominated the energetic policy of stone-road building in their
State heard this alarming challenge from the North. The echo ran
‘Low Bridge!’ in the poor decaying locks of the Potomac Company
where, according to the committee once appointed to examine that
enterprise, flood-tides ‘gave the only navigation that was
enjoyed.’ Were their efforts to keep the Chesapeake metropolis in
the lead to be set at naught?

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invention to the good of the nation without personal
considerations, must be credited with perceiving at the very
beginning the peculiar importance of the steamboat to the
American West
Fitch, in addition to the high purpose of devoting his new
invention to the good of the nation without personal
considerations, must be credited with perceiving at the very
beginning the peculiar importance of the steamboat to the
American West. His original application to Congress in 1785
opened: ‘The subscriber begs leave to lay at the feet of
Congress, an attempt he has made to facilitate the internal
Navigation of the United States, adapted especially to the Waters
of the Mississippi.’ At another time with prophetic vision he
wrote: ‘The Grand and Principle object must be on the Atlantick,
which would soon overspread the wild forests of America with
people, and make us the most oppulent Empire on Earth. Pardon me,
generous public, for suggesting ideas that cannot be dijested at
this day.’

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