The Paths of Inland Commerce; A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and WaterwayHulbert, Archer Butler
History
The Paths of Inland Commerce; A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway
Hulbert, Archer Butler
Transportation -- United States -- History
The traveler at the beginning of the century noticed a change in the
temper of the people as well as a change in the soil when the
Bonnyclabber Country was reached. The time-serving attitude of the good
people of the East now gave place to a "consciousness of independence"
due, Baily remarks, to the fact that each man was self-sufficient and
passed his life "without regard to the smiles and frowns of men in
power." This spirit was handsomely illustrated in the case of one burly
Westerner who was "churched" for fighting. Showing a surly attitude to
the deacon-judges who sat on his case, he was threatened with civil
prosecution and imprisonment. "I don't want freedom," he is said to have
replied, bitterly; "I don't even want to live if I can't knock down a
man who calls me a liar."
Pushing on westward by way of historic Sideling Hill and Bedford to
Statlers, Baily found here a prosperous millstone quarry, which sold its
stones at from fifteen to thirty dollars a pair. Twelve years earlier
Washington had prophesied that the Alleghanies would soon be furnishing
millstones equal to the best English burr. As he crossed the mountains
Baily found that taverns charged the following schedule: breakfast,
eighteen pence; dinner and supper from two shillings to two shillings
and sixpence each. Traversing Laurel Hill, he reached Pittsburgh just at
the time when it was awakening to activity as the trading center of the
West.
In order to descend the Ohio, Baily obtained a flatboat, thirty-six feet
long and twelve feet broad, which drew eighteen inches of water and was
of ten tons burden. On the way downstream, Charleston and Wheeling were
the principal settlements which Baily first noted. Ebenezer Zane, the
founder of Wheeling, had just opened across Ohio the famous landward
route from the Monongahela country to Kentucky, which it entered at
Limestone, the present Maysville. This famous road, passing through
Zanesville, Lancaster, and Chillicothe, though at that time safe only
for men in parties, was a common route to and from Kentucky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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