etween the Niagara and Lake Champlain, where contending armies and
navies operated. While these scenes of alarm and turmoil were enacting,
and our trade with Great Britain was cut off, an intense interest arose
for manufactures of first necessity, needed by the country, particularly
for that indispensable article of new settlements, window glass. In
directing the foreign artisans employed in the making of this product of
skill, my father, Col. Lawrence Schoolcraft, had, from an early period
after the American Revolution, acquired celebrity, by the general
superintendency of the noted works of this kind near Albany, and
afterwards in Oneida County.

Under his auspices, I directed the erection of similar works in Western
New York and in the States of Vermont and New Hampshire.

While in Vermont, I received a salary of eighteen hundred dollars per
annum, which enabled me to pursue my studies, _ex academia_, at
Middlebury College. In conversation with President Davis, I learned that
this was the highest salary paid in the State, he himself receiving
eleven hundred, and the Governor of the State but eight hundred.

The extensive and interesting journeys connected with the manufacturing
impulse of these engagements, reaching over a varied surface of several
hundred miles, opened up scenes of life and adventure which gave me a
foretaste of, and preparedness for, the deeper experiences of the
western wilderness; and the war with England was no sooner closed than I
made ready to share in the exploration of the FAR WEST. The wonderful
accounts brought from the Mississippi valley--its fertility, extent, and
resources--inspired a wish to see it for myself, and to this end I made
some preliminary explorations in Western New York, in 1816 and 1817. I
reached Olean, on the source of the Alleghany River, early in 1818,
while the snow was yet upon the ground, and had to wait several weeks
for the opening of that stream. I was surprised to see the crowd of
persons, from various quarters, who had pressed to this point, waiting
the opening of the navigation.

It was a period of general migration from the East to the West. Commerce
had been checked for several years by the war with Great Britain.
Agriculture had been hindered by the raising of armies, and a harassing
warfare both on the seaboard and the frontiers; and manufactures had
been stimulated to an unnatural growth, only to be crushed by the peace.
Speculation had also been rife