If their journey had but been a few years later, a railroad train would have taken them as far as Columbia, Pennsylvania; then a canal would have carried them along the east bank of the Susquehanna River as far as the entrance to the Juniata. At this point the canal would have crossed that great river by means of an aqueduct and they would have followed the blue Juniata to Hollidaysburg. There the problem how to get over the forbidding mountain ridge that faced them would have been solved by the exciting method of a portage which by means of pulleys drew the cars up to fourteen hundred feet above that town, using three levels for separate short journeys from level to level. The descent to Johnstown on the other side of the ridge would have been made by the same method reversed, and the canal packet boat from that place would have used the Kiskiminetos River along to Pittsburgh, where the great Ohio River would have brought them to Cincinnati. All this could have been done in 1836. But this was 1832; and none of these things were under way at the time, though they were being more or less seriously thought of. The only method of traveling in the year 1832 was by the time-honored daily or tri-weekly stages. Of these stage-coach lines an elaborate system was at their service; for the largest part of the journey, the family availed themselves of this method, sometimes, however, finding it more economical for so large a party to charter a coach and have it all to themselves. We may imagine them climbing into a big old-fashioned stage, drawn by four great horses, and starting out for Wheeling, a city that lies right in the line from New York to the southern part of Ohio, if you make the line curve a little bit to the south in order to make the easiest cut through the mountains.