Albert Perry Brigham

“ If one rides into Pittsburg by night, he will see something finer than fireworks. The train is likely to whirl him past long rows of fiery ovens in which coal is being made into coke. And in many towns near by, as well as along the rivers by the city itself, the jets of flame will show iron furnaces and steel mills, with grimy workmen moving about in the strange light. ”

“ At Rochester our traveler crosses the Genesee, and remembers the hardy pioneer who left comfortable old Hagerstown to build a city in the swamp and forest. Colonel Rochester could have had no idea of the fine city he was starting, or of the orchards, nurseries, and wheat fields that would be around it, but he lived long enough to see the flour mills at the falls doing a thriving business. Thus wheat and flour made Rochester as salt made Syracuse, and first the canal and then the great railway took these useful things to market. ”

“ If the traveler wishes to see the land and learn what men have done in a hundred years, he will leave the train at Knoxville. A carriage or an electric car will carry him between blocks of fine buildings to a modern hotel, where he will find food and bed and places to read, write, rest, or do business, as he likes. Around him is a busy city stretching up and down its many hills. Before long he will wander down to the banks of the Tennessee river and see the boats tied at the wharf, or he will cross the great bridge to the hills beyond and look back over the city. ”

“ Pittsburg is proud of the fact that she handles more tons of freight in a year than any other city in the world. Indeed, the tonnage is greater than that of New York and Chicago taken together.
The old “point” between the rivers is filled with tall buildings. Inclined railways run up the steep bluffs on the further side of each river and lead to the beautiful streets and the homes where many of the people live. For Pittsburg is not all coal and furnaces and smoke, but has fine churches, the great Carnegie Library and Museum, and many schools. ”

“ We have now learned of two great, well-trodden routes from east to west,—the route of the Hudson and the Mohawk through New York, and the route through the southern parts of Pennsylvania from Philadelphia to Pittsburg.
In laying out such roads the pioneers almost always followed trails that the Indians had made. For long generations the red men had followed the same paths, beating them smooth and deep in the forest earth. The white men widened the trail by using pack horses, loading the beasts well with all sorts of things. ”

“ We might wonder whether a town with a name like that would ever grow into a great city. It did not have to try, for it was not long before General St. Clair, who had come there, made fun of the name and insisted upon a new one. He and other officers of the American army had formed a society commemorating their experience in the Revolution, and in honor of the Roman patriot Cincinnatus had called themselves the Order of Cincinnati. St. Clair thought this a good name for the town, and Cincinnati it has been since that time. ”

“ We must not forget that off to the west James Robertson had founded a city that is even older than Knoxville. In the great bend of the Cumberland, on its south bank, in northern Tennessee, stands Nashville, as we have already seen.
If we visit a large city in one of the countries of Europe, we are quite likely to be told, or to read in our guidebook, that its history goes back hundreds of years, and any town that was started only a hundred172 years ago would there seem young. But we measure age differently in America, and a town like Nashville, founded in 1780, we think is old indeed. ”

“ These long ranges of mountains run from north to south, and while it was easy to follow the valleys between them, it was hard to go across them from east to west or from west to east. Boston and all the chief towns of New England lay eastward, and the rest of the country was west of the mountains. If a Massachusetts family wished to settle in the fertile lands of western New York or Ohio, they had to cross the mountains. In our day the mountain region is full of towns and beautiful summer homes, but then it was a wilderness which in places was almost impassable. ”

“ This is the earliest record of a white man’s journey through a region which now contains large towns and is traversed by many railway trains every day in the year.
No one knows how long there had been Indians and Indian trails in the Mohawk valley. These trails Van Curler followed, often coming upon some of the red men themselves, and visiting them in a friendly way. They, as well as the white settlers who followed them, chose the flat, rich lands along the river, for here it was easy to beat a path, and with their bark canoes they could travel and fish. ”

“ And New England had only a wagon road across the mountains! A wagon road will never draw trade away from a tidal river, and thus we can understand why a prominent Massachusetts man, Charles Francis Adams, spoke of the Hudson as “a river so fatal to Boston.” Boston might have all the ships she wanted, but if she could not get cargoes for them they would be of no use. Shipowners, seeing that there was plenty of western freight in New York, sent their boats there. It was indeed time that Boston people began to ask themselves what they could do. ”

“ To-day you may, if you choose, pass the mountains without climbing through the gap, for trains go roaring through a tunnel a mile long, while the echo of the screaming whistles rolls along the mountain sides. ”

“ Harrisburg is at the right point for the state government. It is not in the center of the state, to be sure, but it is at the rear of the lowlands which reach in from the sea, and is just outside the great gateway where roads from all the northern, western, and central uplands come out on the plain. It is a convenient center for coal and iron, and hence one sees along the river below the city many blast furnaces, rolling mills, and factories. To the northeast rich, open lands stretch along the base of Blue mountain, and railroads join Harrisburg to Reading, Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton. ”

“ OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA TO THE WEST
The people of New York City like to say that Philadelphia is slow, and would almost make one think that all the men there wear Quaker hats and act like William Penn. The citizens of Philadelphia, however, are not much troubled by this, for they have a great and busy city, and they like to remind the men of New York that Philadelphia is a “city of homes,” and that the people do not live in great tenement houses nor do all their business in “sky scrapers.” ”

“ Going up the Hudson and the Mohawk, the traveler will hardly pass one busy town before he is in sight of another. When he looks across the river and sees Newburg he will remember that in a plain old house in that city General Washington had his headquarters. When he comes in sight of Albany he will see the great Capitol building61 standing high over all others. At Schenectady he will think of Arent Van Curler and the old boatmen and the dreadful French and Indian massacre. At Utica he will pass the ford where thousands waded the river as they went to the wilderness. ”

“ Moreover in fighting off the Indians from their own cabins and cornfields they had protected the frontiers of Virginia and others of the older states, so that Kentucky was a kind of advance guard beyond the mountains, and led the way for Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and other great states in the West and South.
Down in the heart of Kentucky, by the Ohio river, is a land long known as the Kentucky Blue Grass region. The “blue grass,” as it is called, grows luxuriantly here, as do grain and tobacco, for the soils, made by the wasting of limestone, are rich and fertile. ”

“ For many years the great passenger boats reigned supreme on the rivers of the West, but at last they in turn were forced to give way to the railroads. Such boats still run on the Ohio and the Mississippi, but men do not travel on them when they wish to go quickly.
Railroad cars, however, do not take the place of some boats on the Ohio. Look out on the Monongahela at Pittsburg and you may see large fields of boats,—many acres of barges, for there are barges on the river still, though they do not look like the old ones. They are of great size and are sometimes made of steel. ”

“ Almost any excuse will serve those to whom no way seems good except their own.
Philadelphia now had its connection with Pittsburg and the Ohio river and the rich lands bordering it, as New York had its way leading to Buffalo and the Great Lakes and the prairies. But the southern road crossed a rougher country than did the northern one, and so it was less easily kept in order and was harder to travel. Hence Philadelphia, like New York, sought better means of communication with the country on the other side of the mountains. ”

“ After a time the lowlands of the coast region began to fill up and the people were pushing westward, just as they did in Pennsylvania and New York. No man had so great a part in this westward movement as the young surveyor, George Washington. In 1748 he was sixteen years old, a tall, strong lad, full of courage and energy. Lord William Fairfax, a rich English gentleman who had settled in Virginia, had bought great tracts of forest land up the Potomac behind the Blue Ridge mountains, and he was eager to have them surveyed. ”

“ From Brownsville the pike leads over the hills and comes down to the Ohio river at Wheeling, West Virginia. It then passes on through Ohio, touching Columbus, the capital, on the way to Indiana and the Mississippi.
We sometimes admire the cars marked with the sign of the United States post office, which we see drawn by a swift locomotive at a speed of sixty miles an hour; but when the government put its mail coaches on the National Road from Washington to Wheeling, no doubt they seemed quite as wonderful to the people of that time. ”

“ Every part of the valley is thickly settled and has fine houses and homes, because its soil produces good crops and makes the people prosperous.
Southern Appalachian Region
Spotswood’s journey opened the way for families from the tide-water region to settle beyond the mountains, but they were not the only settlers. It was easy for the people of the Great Valley in Pennsylvania, where the land was earlier taken up, to push to the southwest along the same valley. They found smoother traveling and better farms than if they had gone up into the mountains on the west. ”

“ It is true that the Dutch pioneers played an important part in the early history of the state and are still widely represented by their descendants in the Mohawk valley, but the leading spirit of colonial days on the river was a native of Ireland who came when a young man to manage his uncle’s estates in America. This was in 1738, nearly fifty years after the Schenectady massacre. The young man, who was in the confidence of the governor of New York and of the king as well, is known to all readers of American history as Sir William Johnson. ”

“ These wilderness men made the best of things, and though they worked hard and fought often, they were a cheerful and happy company. They were not spoiled by having too many luxuries, and they did not think that the world owed them a living without any effort on their part.
Beginning about the time of the Declaration of Independence, many people found the way to Kentucky by the Great Valley, the Cumberland Gap, and the Wilderness road. When fifteen years had gone by there were seventy thousand people in Kentucky, along the Ohio river. ”

“ There was some excuse for not enjoying railway travel, for the roadbeds were often made of solid rock, and the cars did not always have springs. The tracks were made of strap iron spiked down to wooden stringers. These iron straps would sometimes become loose, and had an unpleasant way of curling up and piercing the floor of the coach where people were sitting.
In these days it is more comfortable and probably safer to ride in a railway train than behind a horse. The Empire State Express runs from New York to Buffalo in eight hours and twenty minutes. ”

“ Washington, who died in 1799, had said much about this work, for he not only wanted western trade to come to Virginia instead of going to New Orleans, but he also felt that so long as the mountains kept the East and the West apart we should never have one common country, held together by friendly feelings.
The people of Baltimore, like those of New York and Philadelphia, were eager to have the best road to the West, that their business might be benefited. Not far from Baltimore is an old place called Joppa, and several roads are still known as “Joppa roads.” ”

“ In foreign trade, however, it stands third, and its docks are busy places. The Hamburg-American, the North-German Lloyd, and the Red Star lines all send regular steamers between Baltimore and Europe, and hundreds of others sail to ports on our own coast, to the West Indies, and to South America. Baltimore builds ships as well as sails them, to carry the corn, flour, and meat of the prairies and the great plains to foreign lands, and to bring back their products in exchange. Where there are railways and ships there are always merchants and factories. ”