st on horseback. It generally
took us near a month to go; a month was spent at General Conference, and
nearly a month in returning to our fields of labor."(295)

Some instances of the manner and cost of emigration may be given. A man
with his wife and brother having arrived at Philadelphia from England, _en
route_ to Birkbeck's settlement(296) in Illinois, the party was directed
to Pittsburg, which they reached after a wearisome journey of over three
hundred miles across the mountains. At Pittsburg they bought a little boat
for six or seven dollars, and came down the Ohio to Shawneetown, whence
they proceeded on foot.(297) In the summer of 1818, a party of
eighty-eight came over the same route in much the same manner, using
flat-boats on the river.(298) In 1817, John Mason Peck, with his wife and
three children, went from Litchfield, Connecticut, to Shawneetown,
Illinois, in a one-horse wagon. The journey was begun on July 25 and
Shawneetown was reached on the sixth of November. "Nearly one month was
occupied in passing from Philadelphia through the State of Pennsylvania
over the Alleghany Mountains, till on the 10th of September he passed into
Ohio. Three weeks he journeyed in that State, and on the 23d of October
recrossed the Ohio River into the State of Kentucky ..., and on the 6th of
November again crossed the Ohio River, into the then Territory of
Illinois, at Shawneetown."(299) Here the family was delayed by floods
which rendered the roads impassable. Leaving the horse and wagon at
Shawneetown to be brought on by a friend, they proceeded to St. Louis in a
keel-boat, paying twenty-five dollars fare, and arrived at their
destination on the first of December.(300)

Shawneetown was a sort of center from which emigrants radiated to their
destinations. It owed much to its location, being on the main route from
the southern states to St. Louis and what was then called the Missouri,
and being also the port for the salt works on Saline Creek. It was the
seat of a land-office. The town thus had a business which was out of all
proportion to the number of its permanent inhabitants. In 1817 it
consisted of but about thirty log houses, a log bank, and a land-office.
When a certain traveler came to the place from the South, in 1818, he
found the number of wagons, horses, and passengers waiting to cross the
Ohio, on the ferry, so great that he had to wait "a great part of the
morning" for his turn.(301)

During the latter part