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: ... from the parlor of the inn A pleasant murmur smote the ear, Like water rushing through a weir; Oft interrupted by the din Of laughter and of loud applause; And, in each intervening pause, The music of a violin. The success of the Cumberland Road to the Ohio created demands for its extension. In conformity to this demand $10,000 was appropriated in 1820 to lay out a road from Wheeling to the Mississippi River near St. Louis. This continuation was for a road 80 feet wide and in spite of much congressional objection and occasional presidential vetoes, the road was pushed on; the last appropriation being made for a portion west of the Ohio, May 25, 1838. The exact total of all appropriations amounted to $6,824,919.33. The road proper reached southern Illinois. [Illustration: _Courtesy of Prof. P. K. Slaymaker_ WAY BILL USED ON SLAYMAKER STAGE LINE FROM LANCASTER TO PHILADELPHIA, 1815]