t is a feeling of confinement, which begins to damp the spirits, from
this complete exclusion of distant objects. To travel day after day,
among trees of a hundred feet high, is oppressive to a degree which
those cannot conceive who have not experienced it; and it must depress
the spirits of the solitary settler to pass years in this state. His
visible horizon extends no farther than the tops of the trees which
bound his plantation--perhaps five hundred yards. Upwards he sees the
sun, and sky, and stars, but around him an eternal forest, from which
he can never hope to emerge:---not so in a thickly settled district; he
cannot there enjoy any freedom of prospect, yet there is variety, and
some scope for the imprisoned vision. In a hilly country a little more
range of view may occasionally be obtained; and a river is a stream
of light as well as of water, which feasts the eye with a delight
inconceivable to the inhabitants of open countries."

In direct contradiction to this longing for society was the passion
which the first generation of pioneers had for the wilderness. When the
population of one settlement became too thick, they were seized by an
irresistible impulse to "follow the migration," as the expression went.
The easy independence of the first hunter-agriculturalist was upset
by the advance of immigration. His range was curtailed, his freedom
limited. His very breath seems to have become difficult. So he sold out
at a phenomenal profit, put out his fire, shouldered his gun, called his
dog, and set off again in search of the solitude he craved.

Severe winter weather overtook Baily as he descended the Ohio River,
until below Grave Creek floating ice wrecked his boat and drove him
ashore. Here in the primeval forest, far from "Merrie England," Baily
spent the Christmas of 1796 in building a new flatboat. This task
completed, he resumed his journey. Passing Marietta, where the bad
condition of the winter roads prevented a visit to a famous Indian
mound, he reached Limestone. In due time he sighted Columbia, the
metropolis of the Miami country. According to Baily, the sale of
European goods in this part of the Ohio Valley netted the importers a
hundred per cent. Prices varied with the ease of navigation. When ice
blocked the Ohio the price of flour went up until it was eight dollars a
barrel; whiskey was a dollar a gallon; potatoes, a dollar a bushel; and
bacon, twelve cents a pound. At these prices, the total prod