sections. Had their narrow views prevailed, the
West, with its new democracy, would have been held in perpetual tutelage
to the seaboard or perhaps been driven into independence as the thirteen
colonies had been not long before.

=Eastern Friends of the West.=--Fortunately for the nation, there were
many Eastern leaders, particularly from the South, who understood the
West, approved its spirit, and sought to bring the two sections together
by common bonds. Washington kept alive and keen the zeal for Western
advancement which he acquired in his youth as a surveyor. He never grew
tired of urging upon his Eastern friends the importance of the lands
beyond the mountains. He pressed upon the governor of Virginia a project
for a wagon road connecting the seaboard with the Ohio country and was
active in a movement to improve the navigation of the Potomac. He
advocated strengthening the ties of commerce. "Smooth the roads," he
said, "and make easy the way for them, and then see what an influx of
articles will be poured upon us; how amazingly our exports will be
increased by them; and how amply we shall be compensated for any trouble
and expense we may encounter to effect it." Jefferson, too, was
interested in every phase of Western development--the survey of lands,
the exploration of waterways, the opening of trade, and even the
discovery of the bones of prehistoric animals. Robert Fulton, the
inventor of the steamboat, was another man of vision who for many years
pressed upon his countrymen the necessity of uniting East and West by a
canal which would cement the union, raise the value of the public lands,
and extend the principles of confederate and republican government.

=The Difficulties of Early Transportation.=--Means of communication
played an important part in the strategy of all those who sought to
bring together the seaboard and the frontier. The produce of the
West--wheat, corn, bacon, hemp, cattle, and tobacco--was bulky and the
cost of overland transportation was prohibitive. In the Eastern market,
"a cow and her calf were given for a bushel of salt, while a suit of
'store clothes' cost as much as a farm." In such circumstances, the
inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley were forced to ship their produce
over a long route by way of New Orleans and to pay high freight rates
for everything that was brought across the mountains. Scows of from five
to fifty tons were built at the towns along the rivers and piloted down