On December 6, 1811, the most destructive earthquake of the century occurred in the country bordering on the lower Ohio River, and on the Mississippi, completely changing the course of the two streams at numerous points. Cramer promptly published a notice of the fact, warning navigators of the danger, and requested newspaper editors to print his notice.[281] The corrections were then made in the next edition of the Navigator which was published in 1814. The success of the Navigator reached its climax in 1814, when it contained three hundred and sixty pages. From that time the size of the book gradually decreased, until in 1824, when its publication was suspended, it had fallen to two hundred and seventy-five pages.
The information relating to Pittsburgh, and to the rivers flowing by and below it, cost Cramer infinite pains to collect. From Cramer’s Navigators the early travelers and later historians drew for facts when writing about the Western country, often without giving credit. Cramer complained of the piracy. In this connection he mentioned the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, whose Journal of a Tour was published in Boston in 1805. He was especially bitter against Thomas Ash, the writer of a book of travel which appeared in London in 1808. He accused Ash of having taken his account of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers verbatim from the Navigator for 1806.[282] Notwithstanding this charge, Ash’s book must have had some merit in Cramer’s eyes, as he republished it the same year that it came out in London. Most of the writers, however, who obtained their information from the Navigator, gave it as their authority. John Mellish who was in Pittsburgh in 1811, commended the work: “The Pittsburgh Navigator is a little book containing a vast variety of information regarding the Western country, the prosperity of which seems to be an object of peculiar solicitude with the editors.”[283] Christian Schultz, coming through Pittsburgh in September, 1807, had this to say: “Before I left Pittsburgh I purchased the Navigator, a kind of Blunt, or Hamilton Moore, for these waters; it is a small pamphlet, but contains a great deal of useful and miscellaneous information, and is particularly serviceable to a stranger.”[284] Blunt was the American Coast Pilot, published in 1796 by Edmund Blunt, and still used in recent years; Hamilton Moore was an English work called the Practical Navigator, of which many editions were published in London by Hamilton Moore.
REFERENCES
Chapter VIII
[271] The Western Gleaner or Repository for Arts, Sciences, and Literature, Pittsburgh, Pa., August, 1814, vol. ii, pp. 173–175.
[272] Pittsburgh Gazette, June 28, 1800.
[273] Pittsburgh Gazette, December 4, 1801.
[274] Tree of Liberty, October 18, 1800.
[275] Pittsburgh Gazette, March 20, 1801.
[276] Tree of Liberty, June 13, 1801.
[277] Pittsburgh Gazette, December 4, 1801.