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HIGHWAYS
AND
HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION

© Major Hamilton Maxwell
© Underwood and Underwood

STORM KING HIGHWAY

A Great Engineering Project Along the Hudson between Cornwall and West Point, N. Y.

HIGHWAYS
AND
HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION

BY
GEORGE R. CHATBURN, A.M., C.E.
Professor of Applied Mechanics and Machine Design
Lecturer on Highway Engineering
The University of Nebraska

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1923, by
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

The following pages on Highways and Highway Transportation do not pretend to be an exhaustive treatise on the subject, but rather a glimpse of the vast development of the humble road and its office as an agency for transportation. Possibly the grandeur of the mountains is best appreciated by one who lives among them, who climbs their acclivitous heights, who daily experiences their power and majesty, and measures their magnitude by grim muscular exertion. But, even so, it would be foolish to contend that he who gets his information from the seat of a Pullman car receives no benefit from the hasty glimpse, or, that his imagination is not quickened and cultured by the experience. In writing this book, then, I have had constantly in mind the myriads of people who have not the time, and possibly not the facilities, to search the pages of the literature of the past for the origin and development, or to work out their present importance, of our amplification of roads and of road uses. It is felt that many of these people laudably desire a conversational knowledge of the origin, evolution and present status of highway transportation, even though it be glimpsed by a very rapid passage through a very large subject.

The primary objects have therefore been, to sketch briefly and simply the development of the transportation systems of the United States, to indicate their importance and mutual relations, to present some practical methods used in the operation of highway transport and to make occasional suggestions for the betterment of the road as a usable machine for the benefit and pleasure of mankind.

Any observations made or conclusions drawn are purely personal. I entered into and have carried on the work entirely unbiased. I am not financially or otherwise, except academically, interested in any firm or company whose business has to do with transportation either directly as a carrier, or indirectly as a manufacturer of the instruments or accessories to transportation, nor does any of my living come from societies or foundations organized as propagandists for any particular forms of transportation, or transportation materials or equipment. I have no admiration for the man who hopes to see the steam and electric railways put out of business or even caused to run at a loss by the automobile, motor express or motor bus. Neither have I any plaudits for the man who would arrest the growth of the new forms of transportation by drastic legal enactments and excessive taxation in order to preserve the old. I believe there is room and need in the United States for all forms of transportation, and that each can thrive in its respective field just as do wheat and corn but none will thrive if they attempt to occupy the same field at the same time.

The text is naturally divided into two parts—the development of highways and their use. The first part treats of the relation of transportation to civilization generally, explaining briefly how the two have grown together like children at school, how each has helped the other, and how the meter of one is the measure of the other.

Leaving the old world there is sketched all too briefly the development in the United States of transportation facilities from the coastal and natural waterways, from the pack and trail, used by the aborigine and early settlers, through the treks of the pioneers, the periods of canal digging, the toll road competition, and the railway frenzy, to the advent of the modern road with the coming of the bicycle and automobile and their wonderful accelerative impulse.

The effects of State and Federal aid upon the road conditions of the country are fully treated as is also the planning of highway systems.

Automotive transportation for business and pleasure including rural motor express and bus lines, and their effect on production and marketing are described and discussed.

In the chapters on highway accidents and highway aids to traffic, attention is called to many types of accidents, including railway crossing accidents, with suggestions for their mitigation. Here also are given the most recent practical rules for the regulation of traffic in both city and country.

A chapter is devoted to the esthetics of the highway, a subject just coming to the attention of road men who have heretofore been mostly concerned with distances, grades, widths and surfaces, which, by the way, are frequently mentioned in the text. As in all building construction the first appeal was made to material things and their relation to the pocket-book, while the last and most enduring appeal is spiritualistic and is made to the pleasures of the imagination.

The same idea of making the road a means of catering to the preservative and pleasure instincts of man is considered in the final chapter on aids and attractions to traffic and travel. Safety and warning devices are discussed as such, while comforts and conveniences are means for luring the average citizen to the highway, to the camps and parks, for the broadening effect upon his character, the health of his body, and the enlightenment of his soul.

Thus we close a most hurried journey from the very beginning of roads to their modern far superior yet very imperfect attainments. The main thought throughout has been the road as a usable agency in the economic and entertaining phases of life. Each equally important to the wealth, health, and happiness of our people. The mind easily travels ahead to a time when separate roads will be devoted to the two great ends of business and pleasure. Then the flight of fancy passes on to still another period of time and sees the highways made inoperative and superfluous, overgrown by weeds and grass, for the argosies of business and pleasure have taken to the air.

George Richard Chatburn.

Lincoln, Nebraska
March 9, 1923.

CONTENTS

LIST OF INSERTS

• 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.)

• 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.

• 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.)

• 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.)

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.

© 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wagon Road Desuetude.

—The introduction of the steam railway with its quicker, better, and cheaper form of transportation put out of existence the freighting and coaching business of the turnpikes, in fact of all wagon roads. Roads which had had a thriving trade found their toll boxes scarcely held enough to maintain the gate keeper. As there was no adequate system of maintenance, although many of them had been macadamized, they gradually fell into a state of disrepair. Freighters and coachers gravitated westward or took shorter runs as feeders to the railroads. Turnpikes, built as private or semi-private enterprises, were gradually being taken over by the public and maintained by local road overseers. The old practice of calling on the freeholders to work out their road tax annually was in vogue and is still in use in places. By it no road was ever kept at a high state of efficiency. Even the National highway, the Cumberland Road, which had been constructed to Vandalia, Illinois, and surfaced with stone to Columbus, Ohio, at an expense to the nation of nearly seven millions of dollars, had lost its ardent supporters. Jackson’s theory that national money should only be spent for roads in territories, and the states’ right idea that each state should be the unit of government and look after all its own internal affairs, seemed to prevail. As a result wagon road building further than to make a mere way for crop marketing at odd seasons of the year stood still until bicycle enthusiasts began an agitation for better roads about 1890. However, a real awakening to the advantages of good roads came only after the advent of the automobile about 1900.

National Participation.

—The Revolutionary War had shown the need of roadways for quick intercourse between the seaboard and the trans-Alleghany regions. The efforts of the different states, still retaining their colonial jealousies, to secure the control of the trade of these regions emphasized the need of a unifying influence which would bring harmony. The debate proceeded in a desultory fashion for a number of years. Strict constitutionalists did not believe the national government has the authority to construct roads at all. States’ rights men argued that road construction is the province of the states and the National Government has jurisdiction only in the territories. On March 29, 1806, President Thomas Jefferson approved a bill to survey and construct a road from a point on the Potomac near Cumberland to the Ohio River near Steubenville popularly known as the Cumberland or National road, and appropriated therefor $30,000. This was in the minds of friends of government control to be the beginning; there was increasing need of travel and traffic facilities from the Hudson to the Great Lakes, from the Delaware to the Ohio; from Virginia and the Carolinas to Kentucky and Tennessee, to say nothing of north and south routes, which unfortunately did not mature in time to prevent the great Civil War a half-century later.

Alfred Gallatin and Henry Clay sponsored the Cumberland Road. The former in compliance with the wish of Congress (1808) drew up a scheme for a national system of internal improvements by roads and canals at an annual expense of $2,000,000 for ten years. But its opponents were able to stay it off and the war of 1812 coming on caused financial troubles and the entire scheme was indefinitely postponed.

The first appropriation for the Cumberland Road had been made, not from the general funds of the government, but from the proceeds of the sales of land, a fiction, of course, for the benefit of the strict constitutionalists. Gradually, however, Congress came to accept the doctrine of “implied powers.” Madison in his last message invited the attention of Congress “to the expediency of exercising their existing powers and, where necessary, of resorting to the prescribed mode of enlarging them, in order to effectuate a comprehensive system of roads and canals, such as will have the effect of drawing more closely together every part of the country, by promoting intercourse and improvements and by increasing the share of every part of the common stock of national prosperity.”[40]

Up to this time there had been completed only 23 miles of the road. In 1816, $300,000 was appropriated for its completion; two years later $260,000 was voted; but a proposal to appropriate $600,000 for internal improvements failed in 1817, as did also a bill providing for the extension of the Cumberland Road. But as a result of the labor of Henry Clay, Albert Gallatin, Thomas Jefferson, President James Madison, and other friends of cheap and rapid transit, by 1820 the total of Congressional appropriations for the Cumberland Road amounted to more than $1,500,000; in 1844 the thirty-fourth appropriation made a total of nearly $7,000,000.[41] The growth of the road was slow: the first contract was let in 1811 for 10 miles; contracts for short sections were let from year to year and the road by 1817 had crawled, following approximately the Nemacolin Path, with the Potomac through the Cumberland gateway over the Alleghany range by way of Negro Mountain at an elevation of 2325 feet, down to the Youghiogheny, past the scene of Braddock’s defeat and the cairn which marks his resting place, through the Laurel Hill Range over to Brownsville within reach of Pittsburgh, thence westward slightly north through Washington (Pennsylvania), to Wheeling (West Virginia) on the Ohio River.

Thus had the old Indian trail developed into a route for Washington and his band to Fort Necessity; into Braddock’s road to Great Meadows; into a pack train trail trampled by thousands of caravan hoofs; and, finally, into a finished paved highway cleared to 66 feet in width, having no grade above 5 per cent which Washington and Jefferson and Madison had visions would be the means of binding together with the strong bands of commerce the cis- and trans-Alleghanian countries.

Extension of the Cumberland Highway.

—The road immediately proved its worth. The mail coaches were placed upon it; great freight lines were established having their own stage houses and depots in towns along its way; inns and hotels thrived; apparently the “pulse of the nation beat to the steady throb of trade along its highway.”[42] Like the Appian Way it became noted the world over. The National, Good Intent, June Bug, and Pioneer stage coach lines were common names as are the Pennsylvania, New York Central, Burlington, and Union Pacific railroad lines of to-day. The coming to town of these coaches, which had developed from the plain square box, through the oval type to the finished Concord painted in brilliant colors, perhaps bearing the name of some prominent personage, drawn by four and six horses, with the proud and arrogant driver often better known than the eminent patrons whose names now grace the pages of history, was an important event in the work of the day. Hardly had the stage stopped before the hostlers were busy changing the horses, taking the tired animals to rub-down, rest, and feed, bringing on fresh high-stepping spirited ones, champing their bits, apparently very anxious for a galloping start toward the next post; the passengers were alighting to stretch their legs, rest and refresh themselves at nearby food “emporiums” or select an inn from among the claims of numerous barkers; agents were transferring and recording baggage, mail, and express; and the curiosity loungers constituted most of the remaining populace. The stage driver, Westover, made a record of forty-five minutes for the 20 miles between Uniontown and Brownsville, while “Red” Bunting’s drive of 131 miles, with the declaration of war against Mexico, in twelve hours remains, like Paul Revere’s ride, a part of the nation’s history.

The amount of traffic over the National road was tremendous. The annual traffic was probably not less than 3000 wagons.[43] One firm in Wheeling is said to have, during the first five years of its existence, done a business of over 5000 wagons carrying 2 tons each.[44] A view of the road must have been interesting, for the Conestoga wagons with their sway-backed canvas covers were said to have been “visible all day long,[45] at every point, making the highway look more like a leading avenue of a great city than a road through rural districts.... I have staid over night with William Cheets on Nigger (Negro) Mountain when there were about thirty six-horse teams in a wagon yard, a hundred Kentucky mules in an adjoining lot, a thousand hogs in their enclosures, and as many fat cattle in adjoining fields. The music made by this large number of hogs eating corn on a frosty night I shall never forget. After supper and attention to the teams, the waggoners would gather in the bar-room and listen to the music on the violin furnished by one of their fellows, have a Virginia hoe-down, sing songs, tell anecdotes, and hear the experience of drivers and drovers from all points of the road, and, when it was over, unroll their beds, lay them down on the floor before the bar room fire side by side, and sleep with their feet near the blaze as soundly as under a parental roof.”

Ah! where is the poet whose facile pen will engrave upon the tablets of literature the tales of these men as has Longfellow the “Tales of a Wayside Inn” in Sudbury Town so alike, where: