“Lateral canals may be made from the main canals in many places, which will serve to collect to the main canal the rich products of the soil through which they pass, and at the same time afford means of furnishing the country with many of the necessities of life at prices greatly below what they now cost without the canal. I will only name the article of salt, which by means of the canal may be furnished to people in the interior of the state from the salines of New York at a price but little, if any thing, exceeding fifty cents per bushel. It is impossible to calculate the benefits that may be derived to the people of this state by the making of the canal. In its progress it will, no doubt, lay open rich beds of minerals. It will lay us, as it were, alongside the Atlantic. It will, in short, _elevate the character of the state, and put it half a century in advance of her present situation_.... “It only remains for the legislature of Ohio to apply the means within their reach to accomplish this desirable object. When accomplished, there can be no doubt but that it will produce a sufficient revenue to defray the expense’s of the state government. “W. STEELE. _Cincinnati, Ohio, 1820._” The arguments made for internal improvements were good; but to the child of nature such talk became a source of alarm. To destroy the forests would diminish the game supply, and he soon began to feel the country was becoming too highly civilized for good and easy living; that buckskin breeches and tow trowsers were already being discarded for imported goods. And when the spirit of advancing civilization came within sight, he who had no fence around his cabin, or little else besides sunflowers or a peach tree to indicate manual labor near the unbounded premises, sold his land at a small advance, and, with family and dogs, moved out to “Ingianny.” Previous to 1820 the inhabitants of the North-west had very little prospect that agriculture would ever be the “road to affluence.” The natural barriers to transportation were viewed as permanent obstacles. A water-way was ridiculed by high authority, which pronounced it little short of madness, and the newspapers in the East had shown the impracticability; and the Western land-owner manifested but little dissatisfaction. He found his way to this country in order to live, and was happy in finding enough to make it easy. He anticipated but little from agriculture as a source of profit. In the Eastern states it had not given satisfaction. But with the population increasing and foreign demand improving, and facilities for transportation better, things showed they were undergoing a change in the older states; and the markets were becoming better, with better management of farms and farming, than at any period since colonial times.