As the people thus year by year went further and further westward, a demand arose for good roads to connect them with the East. The merchants on the seaboard wanted to send them hardware, clothing, household goods, farming implements, and bring back to the seaports the potash, lumber, flour, skins, and grain with which the settlers paid for these things. If they were too costly, frontiersmen could not buy them. If the roads were bad, the difficulty of getting merchandise to the frontier would make them too costly. People living in the towns and cities along the seaboard were no longer content with the old-fashioned slow way of travel. They wanted to get their letters more often, make their journeys and have their freight carried more quickly.[1] [Footnote 1: McMaster's _History of the People of the United States,_ Vol. III., pp. 462-465.] About 1805, therefore, men began to think of reviving the old idea of canals, which had been abandoned in 1793, and one of these canal companies, the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, applied to Congress for aid. This brought up the question of a system of internal improvements at national expense, and Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, was asked to send a plan for such a system to Congress, which he did. Congress never approved it. %284. The National Pike.%--Public sentiment, however, led to the commencement of a highway to the West known as the National Pike, or the Cumberland Road. When Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state in 1803, Congress promised that part of the money derived from the sale of land in Ohio should be used to build a road from some place on the Ohio River to tide water. By 1806 the money so set apart amounted to $12,000, and with this was begun the construction of a broad pike from Cumberland (on the Potomac) in Maryland to Wheeling (on the Ohio) in West Virginia.[1] [Footnote 1: McMaster's _History_, Vol. III., pp. 469-470.] [Illustration: Phoenix[1]] [Footnote 1: From an oil painting.] %285. Steamboats.%--This increasing demand for cheap transportation now made it possible for Fulton to carry into successful operation an idea he had long had in mind. For twenty years past inventors had been exhibiting steamboats. James Rumsey had exhibited one on the Potomac. John Fitch had shown one on the Delaware in 1787. (See p. 190.) In 1804 Robert Fulton exhibited a steamboat on the Seine at Paris in France; Oliver Evans had a steam scow on the Delaware River at Philadelphia; and John Stevens crossed the Hudson from Hoboken to New York in a steamboat of his own construction. In 1806 Stevens built another, the _Phoenix_.[1] [Footnote 1: Preble's _History of Steam Navigation _, pp. 35-66; Thurston's _Robert Fulton_ in Makers of America Series.]