Meanwhile, that migration, heralded, as we have seen, just before the Revolution, by huntsmen and traders, meagre by reason of Indian hostility and the need of soldiers on the Atlantic side of the mountains till independence had been won, became appreciable at the end of the century and grew to an inundating stream after the War of 1812 had made the Mississippi secure to the new republic beyond all question. "Old America," said an observing English traveller in 1817, "seems to be breaking up and moving westward. We are seldom out of sight, as we travel on this grand track (the national turnpike through Pennsylvania) towards the Ohio, of family groups behind and before us.... A small waggon so light that you might almost carry it, yet strong enough to bear a good load of bedding and utensils and provisions and a swarm of young citizens, and to sustain marvellous shocks in its passage over these rocky heights with two small horses and sometimes a cow or two, comprises their all; excepting a little store of hard earned cash for the land-office of the district; where they may obtain a title for as many acres as they possess half dollars, being one-fourth of the purchase money. The waggon has a tilt, or cover, made of a sheet, or perhaps a blanket. The family are seen before, behind, or within the vehicle, according to the road or the weather, or perhaps the spirits of the party.... A cart and single horse, frequently affords the means of transfer, sometimes a horse and pack saddle. Often the back of the poor pilgrim bears all his effects, and his wife follows, bare footed, bending under the hopes of the family." [Footnote: Morris Birkbeck, "Notes on a Tour in America, 1817," pp. 34, 35.] This is a detail of the exodus through the most northern mountain pass. Farther south the procession moved in heavy wagons drawn by four or six horses. "Family groups, crowding the roads and fords, marching toward the sunset," at right angles to the courses of the migratory birds, not mindful as they of seasons, "were typical of the overland migration" across Tennessee and Kentucky. The poorer classes travelled on foot, as at the north, but drew after them carts with all their household effects. [Footnote: F. J. Turner, "Rise of the New West," p. 80.] Still farther south "the same type of occupation was to be seen; the poorer classes of southern emigrants cut out their clearings along the rivers that flowed to the gulf and to the lower Mississippi," [Footnote: F. J. Turner, "Rise of the New West," p. 90.] and later still farther west into what is now Texas. The squatters whom I saw in my walk around the city of Paris, inhabiting what was the military zone with their portable houses, or in their dilapidated shacks, had better shelter than they who first invaded the zone beyond the mountain walls that were the natural western fortifications of the Atlantic colonies.