But enterprise in steamboat navigation was not confined to the coast. Business opportunities in the Mississippi valley attracted the attention of one Nicholas Roosevelt, who proposed to Fulton and Livingston that he would make a trip to New Orleans to survey the prospects for an inland water route, with the understanding that they should finance a steamboat line if his report was favorable. So favorable was it that he was placed in charge of the construction of a river boat at Pittsburg, and in 1811 the _New Orleans_ made her maiden trip down the Mississippi. Thereafter Roosevelt's boat took a regular route between New Orleans and Natchez. Other boats were added, but it was not until 1815 that a voyage was made upstream from New Orleans to Louisville and Cincinnati. After assisting Jackson in the campaign about New Orleans, the _Enterprise_, taking advantage of high water, steamed to Louisville in _twenty-five days_. In 1817 the _Washington_ accomplished the same feat while the river was within her banks, and the public became convinced of the practicability of upstream navigation. The same year the _Shelby_ reduced the time to twenty days, and by 1823 _fifteen days sufficed_. With the success of the steamboat, the Middle West was opened to rapid communication with the gulf. WAGON ROADS INTO THE INTERIOR. From 1807 to 1815 two changes had a marked effect upon the national attitude toward internal improvements. Before the outbreak of the European wars manufactures had made some progress in New England and in Pennsylvania. During the first struggle, and before the peace of Amiens, the only serious obstacle to American industry was the tendency to divert capital to wheat raising, shipbuilding and foreign trade. Prices were high, and the makers of goods found encouragement in large profits. With the cessation of hostilities American manufacturers looked to Congress for protection, for foreign goods poured into the country in such quantities and at such prices as to threaten the destruction of domestic production. At the most, however, the manufacturing population was relatively small, but the disturbances to industry from 1815 to 1818 were such as to throw many out of employment, and to bring to the verge of bankruptcy and starvation those who had been engaged in shipbuilding and foreign trade. A great exodus to the interior was the result. In wagons, on horseback, or on foot--sometimes using handcarts, sleds and wheelbarrows to carry their provisions and light luggage--emigrants crowded the wooded paths that led to the West, where they might find conditions more favorable to independent livelihood.