ts."(209) We have seen how long
deferred was the fulfillment of their hope of getting a title to the
coveted land. Although the East was not crowded, it is true that land
there was more expensive than that of the same quality in the West. In
1806, three dollars per acre was the maximum price in even the settled
parts of Indiana Territory, while fifty dollars per acre had been paid for
choice Kentucky land.(210)

The greater number of immigrants came by water, but a family too poor to
travel thus, or whose starting-point was not near a navigable stream,
could come overland. Illinois was favored by having a number of large
rivers leading toward it; the Ohio, Kentucky, Cumberland, Tennessee, and
their tributaries were much used by emigrants. The chief route by land was
the Wilderness Road, over which thousands of the inhabitants of Kentucky
had come. Its existence helps to explain the wonderful growth of
Kentucky--in 1774 the first cabin, in 1790 a population of 73,000. It
crossed the mountains at Cumberland Gap, wound its way by the most
convenient course to Crab Orchard, and was early extended to the Falls of
the Ohio and later to Vincennes and St. Louis. The legislature of Kentucky
provided, in 1795, that the road from Cumberland Gap to Crab Orchard
should be made perfectly commodious and passable for wagons carrying a
weight of one ton, and appropriated two thousand pounds for the work. Two
years later five hundred dollars were appropriated for the repair of the
road, and the highway was made a turnpike with prescribed toll, although
it did not become such a road as the word turnpike suggests.(211)

A traveler of 1807 described the river craft of the period. The smallest
kind in use was a simple log canoe. This was followed by the pirogue,
which was a larger kind of canoe and sufficiently strong and capacious to
carry from twelve to fifteen barrels of salt. Skiffs were built of all
sizes, from five hundred to twenty thousand pounds burden, and batteaux
were the same as the larger skiffs, being indifferently known by either
name. Kentucky boats were strong frames of an oblong form, varying in size
from twenty to fifty feet in length and from ten to fourteen in breadth,
were sided and roofed, and guided by huge oars. New Orleans boats
resembled Kentucky boats, but were larger and stronger and had arched
roofs. The largest could carry four hundred and fifty barrels of flour.
Keel boats were generally built from forty to e