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the temper of the people as well as a change in the soil when the
Bonnyclabber Country was reached
The traveler at the beginning of the century noticed a change in
the temper of the people as well as a change in the soil when the
Bonnyclabber Country was reached. The time-serving attitude of
the good people of the East now gave place to a ‘consciousness of
independence’ due, Baily remarks, to the fact that each man was
self-sufficient and passed his life ‘without regard to the smiles
and frowns of men in power.’ This spirit was handsomely
illustrated in the case of one burly Westerner who was ‘churched’
for fighting. Showing a surly attitude to the deacon-judges who
sat on his case, he was threatened with civil prosecution and
imprisonment. ‘I don”t want freedom,’ he is said to have replied,
bitterly; ‘I don”t even want to live if I can”t knock down a man
who calls me a liar.’

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the
toils and dangers of travel through these wild hill regions
>From the journals of the time may be caught faint glimpses of
the
toils and dangers of travel through these wild hill regions. Let
the traveler of today, as he follows the track that once was
Braddock”s Road, picture the scene of that earlier time when, in
the face of every natural obstacle, the army toiled across the
mountain chains. Where the earth in yonder ravine is whipped to a
black froth, the engineers have thrown down the timber cut in
widening the trail and have constructed a corduroy bridge, or
rather a loose raft on a sea of muck. The wreck of the last wagon
which tried to pass gives some additional safety to the next.
Already the stench from the horse killed in the accident deadens
the heavy, heated air of the forest. The sailors, stripped to the
waist, are ready with ropes and tackle to let the next wagon down
the incline; the pulleys creak, the ropes groan. The horses, weak
and terror-stricken, plunge and rear; in the final crash to the
level the leg of the wheel horse is caught and broken; one of the
soldiers shoots the animal; the traces are unbuckled; another
beast is substituted. Beyond, the seamen are waiting with tackle
attached to trees on the ridge above to assist the horses on the
cruel upgrade–and Braddock, the deceived, maligned,
misrepresented, and misjudged, creeps onward in his brave
conquest of the Alleghanies in a campaign that, in spite of its
military failure, deserves honorable mention among the
achievements of British arms.

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placing it on motor trucks operating over the highways, millions of
tons of merchandise and materials are transported satisfactorily and
the railroads are given much needed relief
By taking part of the burden of the ’short haul’ off the railroads and
placing it on motor trucks operating over the highways, millions of
tons of merchandise and materials are transported satisfactorily and
the railroads are given much needed relief. The motive power and cars
thus freed from short-haul work can be employed in very important
long-distance service. The Railroad Administration has indorsed motor
transportation for this work and reported that this form of relief
will make it possible for the railroads to operate more effectively
under the present traffic congestion; hence shippers using the
highways are assisting in the solution of transportation problems and
rendering a patriotic service. It is also to be noted that if shippers
use the highways for short hauls and thus relieve the railroads of a
burden, they assist in improving general conditions so that they will
indirectly benefit by having more prompt service on long-distance
shipments.

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Ferrari F40 Prototype at MSR.

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building, for it had surveyed as early as 1762 the first lock
canal in America, from near Reading on the Schuylkill to
Middletown on the Susquehanna
Pennsylvania had been foremost among the colonies in canal
building, for it had surveyed as early as 1762 the first lock
canal in America, from near Reading on the Schuylkill to
Middletown on the Susquehanna. Work, however, had to be suspended
when Pontiac”s Rebellion threw the inland country into a panic.
But the enterprise of Maryland and Virginia in 1785 in developing
the Potomac aroused the Pennsylvanians to renewed activity. The
Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland
Navigation set forth a programme that was as broad as the
Keystone State itself. Their ultimate object was to capture the
trade of the Great Lakes. ‘If we turn our view,’ read the
memorial which the Society presented to the Legislature, ‘to the
immense territories connected with the Ohio and Mississippi
waters, and bordering on the Great Lakes, it will appear…
that our communication with those vast countries (considering
Fort Pitt as the port of entrance upon them) is as easy and may
be rendered as cheap, as to any other port on the Atlantic tide
waters.’

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In this trade the riverman was the fundamental factor. Only by
means of his brawn and his genius for navigation could these
innumerable tons of flour, tobacco, and bacon have been kept from
rotting on the shores. Yet the man himself remains a legend
grotesque and mysterious, one of the shadowy figures of a time
when history was being made too rapidly to be written. If we ask
how he loaded his flatboat or barge, we are told that ‘one squint
of his eye would blister a bull”s heel.’ When we inquire how he
found the channel amid the shifting bars and floating islands of
that tortuous two-thousand-mile journey to New Orleans, we are
informed that he was ‘the very infant that turned from his
mother”s breast and called out for a bottle of old rye.’ When we
ask how he overcame the natural difficulties of trade–lack of
commission houses, varying standards of money, want of systems of
credit and low prices due to the glutting of the market when
hundreds of flatboats arrived in the South simultaneously on the
same freshet–we are informed that ‘Billy Earthquake is the
geniwine, double-acting engine, and can out-run, out-swim, chaw
more tobacco and spit less, drink more whiskey and keep soberer
than any other man in these localities.’

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Elkanah Watson was in many ways the Washington of New York. He
had the foresight, patience, and persistence of the Virginia
planter. His ‘Journal’ of a tour up the Mohawk in 1788 and a
pamphlet which he published in 1791 may be said to be the
ultimate sources in any history of the internal commerce of New
York. As a result, a company known as ‘The President, Directors,
and Company of the Western Inland Lock Navigation in the State of
New York,’ with a capital stock of $25,000, was authorized by act
of legislature in March, 1792, and the State subscribed for
$12,500 in stock. Many singular provisions were inserted in this
charter, but none more remarkable than one which stipulated that
all profits over fifteen per cent should revert to the State
Treasury. This hint concerning surplus profits, however, did not
cause a stampede when the books were opened for subscriptions in
New York and Albany. In later years, when the Erie Canal gave
promise of a new era in American inland commerce, Elkanah Watson
recalled with a grim satisfaction the efforts of these early
days. The subscription books at the old Coffee House in New York,
he tells us, lay open three days without an entry, and at Lewis”s
tavern in Albany, where the books were opened for a similar
period, ‘no mortal’ had subscribed for more than two shares.

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rival canal with canal
There could be but one answer to the challenge, and that was to
rival canal with canal. These more southerly States, confronted
by the towering ranges of the Alleghanies to the westward, showed
a courage which was superb, although, as time proved in the case
of Maryland, they might well have taken more counsel of their
fears. Pennsylvania acted swiftly. Though its western waterway–
the roaring Juniata, which entered the Susquehanna near
Harrisburg–had a drop from head to mouth greater than that of
the entire New York canal, and, though the mountains of the
Altoona region loomed straight up nearly three thousand feet,
Pennsylvania overcame the lowlands by main strength and the
mountain peaks by strategy and was sending canal boats from
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh within nine years of the completion of
the Erie Canal.

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was Francis Baily, later in life president of the Royal
Astronomical Society of Great Britain, but at the time of his
American tour a young man of twenty-two
One of the most amiable and clear-headed of such foreign guests
was Francis Baily, later in life president of the Royal
Astronomical Society of Great Britain, but at the time of his
American tour a young man of twenty-two. His journey in 1796-97
gave him a wide experience of stage, flatboat, and pack-horse
travel, and his genial disposition, his observant eye, and his
discriminating criticism, together with his comments on the
commercial features of the towns and regions he visited, make his
record particularly interesting and valuable to the historian.*
Using Baily”s journal as a guide, therefore, one can today
journey with him across the country and note the passing show as
he saw it in this transitional period.

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put a nation on wheels
But neither roads nor ferries were of themselves sufficient to
put a nation on wheels. The early polite society of the settled
neighborhoods traveled in horse litters, in sedan chairs, or on
horseback, the women seated on pillions or cushions behind the
saddle riders, while oxcarts and horse barrows brought to town
the produce of the outlying farms. Although carts and rude wagons
could be built entirely of wood, there could be no marked advance
in transportation until the development of mining in certain
localities reduced the price of iron. With the increase of travel
and trade, the old world coach and chaise and wain came into use,
and iron for tire and brace became an imperative necessity. The
connection between the production of iron and the care of
highways was recognized by legislation as early as 1732, when
Maryland excused men and slaves in the ironworks from labor on
the public roads, though by the middle of the century owners of
ironworks were obliged to detail one man out of every ten in
their employ for such work.

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