had already settled west of the
Alleghany Mountains. Most of them lived along the Ohio and the streams
flowing into it from the north and the south. In the upland valleys of the
Kentucky and Tennessee Rivers settlers were especially numerous.

These lands were so fertile that the people living there became very
prosperous. As their harvests were abundant, they needed a market in which
to sell what they could not use.

We have seen how in the autumn it was their custom to load the furs on
pack-horses, and driving the cattle before them along the forest trail, to
make the long journey over the mountains to cities and towns along the
Atlantic coast.

[Illustration: A Flatboat on the Ohio River.]

But to send their bulky products by this route was too expensive. Water
transportation cost much less. Such produce as corn-meal, flour, pork, and
lumber had to go on rafts or flatboats down the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers to New Orleans. Here the cargo and the boat were sold, or the cargo
sold and loaded on ocean vessels, which in time reached the eastern market
by a cheaper though longer route than that by land. Thus the Mississippi
River, being the only outlet for this heavy produce, was very necessary to
the prosperity of the west.

But Spain at this time owned New Orleans and all the land about the mouth
of the Mississippi River; and as the river became more and more used for
traffic Spanish officers at New Orleans began to make trouble. They even
went so far as to threaten to prevent the sending of produce to that port.

This threat greatly troubled and angered the western farmers. They
proposed wild plans to force an outlet for their trade. But before
anything was done, news came that Napoleon, who was then at the head of
affairs in France, had compelled Spain to give up Louisiana to France.

Then the westerners grew still more alarmed about their trade. It was bad
enough to have a weak country like Spain in control of Louisiana. But it
might be far worse to have France, the greatest military power in the
world at that time, own it. All this was very plain to Jefferson, and he
knew that Napoleon was planning to establish garrisons and colonies in
Louisiana.

In view of the possible dangers, he sent James Monroe to France to aid our
minister there in securing New Orleans and a definite stretch of territory
in Louisiana lying on the east side of the Mississippi River. If he could
get that territory, the Americans wou