ng all this period,
which we may properly call the pioneer stage, the settlers had no
market for their produce, except to supply the demand of incoming
immigrants. Grain and fruit would not bear the expense of
transportation. The only way to obtain ready money was to convert
corn and grain into hogs, horses and cattle, which were driven on
the hoof to Pittsburg and eastern cities. But little money
circulated, and that was chiefly irredeemable bank notes. The
clothing of the people was mainly of linsey-woolsey, home-made.
The spinning wheel, big and little, was to be found in every
household. Settlers near the banks of the Ohio River, and its
tributaries, had the advantage of floating their surplus products
in rough barges down the Ohio to New Orleans for a market, so that
the southern part of the state advanced rapidly, while the northern
part was still in the possession of the Indians.

When the Indian title was extinguished settlers came from Pennsylvania
into the counties immediately west of it, which are still, in the
habits of the people, in the location of houses and barns and the
cultivation of the soil, the precise counterpart of the region from
which the settlers came. The "Connecticut Reserve" was slowly
filled by the northern route of the lakes, almost exclusively from
New England, and the habits and customs of that region were
transported to their new homes, so that the "Western Reserve" to-
day is a striking type of old Connecticut in habits, and with the
same ideas. The lakes became the highway of commerce, and the
inhabitants of the interior carried their surplus grain and produce
in long lines of wagons to the new towns along the lake shore,
where it was exchanged for the necessaries of life and enough money
to pay taxes. All trade in the interior was by barter with merchants,
who became the bankers of the people.

The construction of the Erie Canal, and the introduction of steamboats
on the rivers and lakes, was the beginning of a great revolution.
Then followed in Ohio the era of internal improvement by the
construction of two lines of canal across the state, one from
Cleveland, on Lake Erie, to Portsmouth, on the Ohio River, and the
other from Toledo, on Maumee Bay, to the city of Cincinnati, with
the lateral canal to Pittsburg, and the improvement of the Muskingum
River by locks and canals.

Salmon P. Chase, then a young attorney at Cincinnati, in his
introduction to his compilation of t