Although it is true that the first steamboat that passed down the Ohio and Mississippi made its trip in the winter of 1811-12, and by 1816 an enterprising captain had made a successful experiment of running a steamboat with coal for fuel, also that the speed of steamboats in eastern waters was a matter for enthusiastic comment, yet it is also true that immigrants to Illinois did not usually arrive by steamer.(293) The development of steamboat navigation in western waters was slow, the first steamboat reaching St. Louis on August 2, 1817.(294) Peter Cartwright wrote of his trip from the West to the General Conference in Baltimore, in 1816: “We had no steamboats, railroad cars, or comfortable stages in those days. We had to travel from the extreme West on horseback. It generally took us near a month to go; a month was spent at General Conference, and nearly a month in returning to our fields of labor.”(295) Some instances of the manner and cost of emigration may be given. A man with his wife and brother having arrived at Philadelphia from England, _en route_ to Birkbeck’s settlement(296) in Illinois, the party was directed to Pittsburg, which they reached after a wearisome journey of over three hundred miles across the mountains. At Pittsburg they bought a little boat for six or seven dollars, and came down the Ohio to Shawneetown, whence they proceeded on foot.(297) In the summer of 1818, a party of eighty-eight came over the same route in much the same manner, using flat-boats on the river.(298) In 1817, John Mason Peck, with his wife and three children, went from Litchfield, Connecticut, to Shawneetown, Illinois, in a one-horse wagon. The journey was begun on July 25 and Shawneetown was reached on the sixth of November. “Nearly one month was occupied in passing from Philadelphia through the State of Pennsylvania over the Alleghany Mountains, till on the 10th of September he passed into Ohio. Three weeks he journeyed in that State, and on the 23d of October recrossed the Ohio River into the State of Kentucky ..., and on the 6th of November again crossed the Ohio River, into the then Territory of Illinois, at Shawneetown.”(299) Here the family was delayed by floods which rendered the roads impassable. Leaving the horse and wagon at Shawneetown to be brought on by a friend, they proceeded to St. Louis in a keel-boat, paying twenty-five dollars fare, and arrived at their destination on the first of December.(300)