About 1820 a new channel of commerce was opened to the inhabitants of the Ohio Valley, in the advantages of which every household shared. This was the establishing of steamboat and flatboat communication with New Orleans. From out of the Wabash River alone over a thousand flatboats, laden with agricultural products, passed into the Ohio during the annual spring rise on their way to the seaport by the Gulf of Mexico. On their return voyage these boats were laden with sacks of coffee, quaint Chinese boxes of tea, china and silk from France, and mahogany and silver from England. In this manner the finest fabrics, which were hitherto obtainable only in those cities that possessed sea communication, were available in every river hamlet. Many of the fine old quilts now being brought to light in the Central West were wrought of foreign cloth which has made this long journey in some farmer's scow. In England during the middle of the past century, the Victorian period was known chiefly for its hideous array of cardboard mottoes done in brilliant wools, crochet tidies, and wax flowers. It is particularly fortunate that at this time the women of the United States were too fully occupied with their own household arts and industries to take up with the ideas of their English sisters. By far the best needlework of this period were the beautiful quilts and bedspreads, exquisite in colour and design, which were the product of American women. The finest quilts were wrought along designs largely original with the quilters themselves, who plied their needles in solitary farmhouses and out-of-the-way hamlets to which the influence of English idea in needlework could not penetrate. In no locality in our country can so many rare and beautiful quilts be found as in the Middle West. Many of the best were made during those early days of struggle for mere existence, when they served the busy housewife as the one precious outlet for her artistic aspirations.