of the territorial period freight charges from
Philadelphia to Pittsburg, by land, were from seven to ten dollars per
hundredweight;(302) from Pittsburg to Shawneetown, one dollar; from
Louisville to Shawneetown, thirty-seven cents; and from New Orleans to
Shawneetown, four dollars and a half.(303) The use of arks was common.
These were flat-bottomed boats of a tonnage of from twenty-five to thirty
tons, covered, square at the ends, of a uniform size of fifty feet in
length and fourteen in breadth, usually sold for seventy-five dollars, and
would carry three or four families. A common practice was to re-sell them
at a somewhat reduced price to someone going further down the river. Two
dollars was the charge for piloting an ark over the falls of the
Ohio.(304)

There is much truth in the remarks made by a German traveler in 1818-19.
He said: "The State of Illinois is from one thousand to twelve hundred
miles distant from the sea ports. The journey thither is often as costly
and tedious, for a man with a family, as the sea passage. Any father of a
family, unless he is well-to-do, can certainly count on being impoverished
upon his arrival in Illinois. At Williamsport, on the Susquehanna, I found
a Swiss, who, with his wife and ten children, had spent one thousand
French crown-dollars for their journey. In the village of Williamsport, an
old German schoolmaster, who seems to have been formerly a merchant in
Nassau, told me that the passage of himself and family had cost thirteen
hundred dollars. For an adult the fare is seventy-five dollars--one dollar
is equal to one thaler, ten groschen, Prussian--for children under twelve
years, half so much, for children of two years, one-fourth so much, and
only babes in arms go free."(305)

It can now be understood why people emigrated to the West, and also why
many went overland. A family too poor to go by water could go in a buggy
or wagon, and if poorer still they might walk, as many actually did. The
immigration to Illinois, which was but a small fraction of the great
westward movement, was still largely southern in origin, Ohio, Michigan,
Indiana, and even New York still staying, in large measure, the tide from
New England. In New England it was the "Ohio fever" and not the Illinois
fever which carried away the people, and the designation is geographically
correct. The men prominent in Illinois politics at the close of the
territorial period, and at the beginning of the state pe