“Couldn’t they have taken them overland?”
“Only in a very small and slow way. There were no railroads, no turnpikes, and even no dirt roads at that time. It would have cost ten times more to take a wagonload of ploughs through the woods and across the prairies, from Pittsburg or Cincinnati to Missouri or Iowa, than the wagon and the ploughs put together were worth when they got there. But the river came to the rescue. It carried the people and all their belongings cheaply and quickly, and then it carried their produce to New Orleans; and so the great West was settled.
“In the meantime the people in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and other towns saw that they could make all the wagons, ploughs, and other things wanted by the people further west much cheaper than the same things could be sent over the mountains from the East. Thus, factories and foundries sprang up, new farms were opened and new towns built.”
“Were there steamboats from the first?” asked one of the boys.
“No; when Vevay was settled, Fulton hadn’t yet built the first steamboat that ever travelled, and when steamboats did appear they were few and small. Flatboats, just like this one, carried most of the produce to New Orleans; but as flatboats couldn’t come back up the river, there were a good many keelboats that brought freight and passengers up as well as down stream.”
“What are keelboats?”
“Why, they were large barges built with a keel, a sharp bow, and a modelled stern—in short, like a steamboat’s hull. These keelboats floated down the river, and the men then pushed them back up stream with long poles. When the current was too strong for that they got out on the bank and hauled the boat by ropes. That was called ‘cordelling.’ The steamboats grew, however, in number and size when they came, and as long ago as 1835 there were more than three hundred of them on the Mississippi alone. In 1850 there were more than four thousand on these rivers. They drove the keelboats out of business, but the flatboats continued because of their cheapness till after the Civil War, when the great towboats came into use. These, with their acres of barges, could carry freight even cheaper than flatboats could. For a long time the steamboats carried all the passengers, too, and many of them were palaces in magnificence. But the railroads came at last and took the passenger business away, and much of the freight traffic also, because they are faster, and still more because they don’t have to go so far to get anywhere.”
“Why, how’s that? I don’t understand,” said Irv.
“Yes, you do, if you’ll think a bit,” responded Ed.
“Couldn’t think of thinking. I’m too tired or too lazy so tell me,” was Irv’s rejoinder.