The Federalists had been accustomed, as previously described, to construct new post-roads instead of confining the mails to roads already built by State or private funds. Some of these post-roads were nothing more than a "trace" cut through the woods, which permitted a man on horseback to pass, carrying a post-bag. Even this could not be done without some expenditure. Occasionally the expense was met by a donation of public lands through which the trace passed. In other instances, payment was made from the postal receipts and appropriations. The constitutionality of such action had been attacked occasionally by the Republicans before they came into power. But having assumed the national control, they were compelled to continue the construction of military and post-roads. Even the fear of a standing army and the desire to economise could not warrant a neglect of the inhabitants scattered through the new possession. Congress owed protection to them not only as an implied power, but as an implied duty. Thus it came about that Jefferson, who a few years before was taking Madison to task for thinking that the power to establish post-roads meant to construct new ones rather than to establish post-routes on those already made, was engaged with his Cabinet in planning a vast system of new highways to and through Louisiana. Among other enterprises, they contemplated a great post-road to New Orleans through Georgia, instead of the long water route heretofore used by way of Nashville and Natchez. The new way, it was estimated, would shorten the journey five hundred miles. Branches were planned to St. Louis and to Detroit. The difficulties of frontier travel may be imagined from the fact that the surveyor-general, who was despatched to examine the feasibility of the Georgia route, was nearly three months in reaching New Orleans from Washington.