nments of the Northwest Territory,
of Indiana Territory, and of the United States, so did Galena send similar
petitions to the governments of Illinois, of Michigan Territory, and of
the United States. In each case the prayers of the petitioners were but
partially granted. In each case the difficulties from Indians, lack of
facilities for commerce, distance from the seat of government, inability
to secure lands, were gradually mitigated until the steady onward sweep of
settlement engulfed the outlying region and it ceased to be the frontier,
and turned its energies to other questions--different, although probably as
difficult. Galena, even at the close of 1830, was a frontier region on the
outskirts of Illinois settlement.

Transportation.

Transportation was long a difficult problem, although it became gradually
less so. Travel by either water or land was slow and difficult. When a
party of about one hundred men, conducted by Colonel R. M. Johnson, went,
in six or eight boats, from St. Louis to the site of the present Galena,
in 1819, to make an arrangement with the Indians which would permit the
whites to mine lead, the upward voyage occupied some twenty days.(390)
Doubtless the journey of Edward Coles from Albemarle county, Virginia, to
Illinois, in 1819, was typical of that of the better class of immigrants.
At the Virginia homestead, slaves, horses and wagons were prepared for the
long journey. A trusty slave was put in charge of the caravan of emigrant
wagons and started out on the long journey over the Alleghanies to
Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Mr. Coles started a few days later, overtook
the party one day's journey from Brownsville, and upon arriving at that
place bought two flat-bottomed boats, upon which negroes, horses and
wagons, with their owner, were embarked. The drunken pilot was discharged
at Pittsburg, and Coles acted as captain and pilot on the voyage of some
six hundred miles down the Ohio to a point below Louisville, whence, the
boats being sold, the journey was continued by land to Edwardsville,
Illinois.(391)

April 5, 1823, a party of forty-three started from Cincinnati in a
keel-boat, arriving at Galena, June 1, 1823. Twenty-two days were required
to stem the flooded Mississippi from the mouth of the Ohio to St. Louis,
and twenty of these were rainy days.(392) In 1822 the English settlement
in Edwards county sent several flat-boats loaded with corn, flour, beef,
pork, sausage, etc., to N