ROUTES TO THE WEST.--Goods for Pittsburg and the West could now leave Philadelphia every day in huge canvas-covered wagons drawn by four or six horses, and were only twenty days on the road. The carrying trade in this way was very great. More than twelve thousand wagons came to Pittsburg each year, bringing goods worth several millions of dollars. From New York wares and merchandise for the West went in sloops up the Hudson to Albany, were wagoned to the falls of the Mohawk, where they were put into "Schenectady boats," which were pushed by poles up the Mohawk to Utica. Thence they went by canal and river to Oswego on Lake Ontario, in sloops to Lewiston on the Niagara River, by wagon to Buffalo, by sloop to Westfield on Lake Erie, by wagon to Chautauqua Lake, and thence by boat down the lake and the Allegheny River to Pittsburg. [Illustration: ROUTES FROM PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK TO THE WEST.] THE STEAMBOAT.--The growth of the country and the increase in travel now made the steamboat possible. Before 1807 all attempts to use such boats had failed. [7] But when Fulton in that year ran the _Clermont_ from New York to Albany and back, practical steam navigation began. In 1808 a line of steamboats ran up and down the Hudson. In 1809 there was one on the Delaware, another on the Raritan, and a third on Lake Champlain. In 1811 a steamboat went from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and in 1812 there were steam ferryboats between what is now Jersey City and New York, and between Philadelphia and Camden. [8] [Illustration: AN EARLY FERRYBOAT.] By the use of the steamboat and better roads it was possible in 1820 to go from New York to Philadelphia between sunrise and sunset in summer, and from New York to Boston in forty-eight hours, and from Boston to Washington in less than five days. THE RUSH TO THE WEST.--After the peace in 1815 came a period of hard times. Great Britain kept our ships out of her ports in the West Indies. France, Spain, and Holland did their own trading with their colonies. Demands for our products fell off, trade and commerce declined, thousands of people were thrown out of employment, and another wave of emigration started westward. Nothing like it had ever before been known. People went by tens of thousands, building new towns and villages, clearing the forests, and turning the prairies into farms and gardens. Some went in wagons, some on horseback; great numbers even went on foot, pushing their children and household goods in handcarts, in wheelbarrows, in little box carts on four small wheels made of plank. [9] Once on the frontier, the pioneer, the "mover," the "newcomer," would secure his plot of land, cut down a few trees, and build a half-faced camp,--a shed with a roof of sapling and bark, and one side open,--and in this he would live till the log cabin was finished.