The Westward Movement

by Unknown

WHAT, THEN, WAS THE FIRST TRANSPORTATION OF THE WEST?

When the Spaniard held the mouth of the Great River, the Frenchman the upper sources, the American only the thin line of coast whose West was the Alleghanies, how then did the West-bound travel, these folk who established half a dozen homes for every generation?

The answer would seem easy. They traveled in the easiest way they could. It was a day of raft and boat, of saddle-horse and pack-horse, of ax and rifle, and little other luggage. Mankind followed the pathways of the waters.

THE RECORD OF THE AVERAGE LINE OF WEST-BOUND TRAVEL.

Bishop Berkeley, prophetic soul, wrote his line, "Westward the course of empire takes its way." The public has always edited it to read that it is the "star of empire" which "takes its way" to the West. If one will read this poem in connection with a government census map, he will not fail to see how excellent is the amendment. Excellent census map, which holds between its covers the greatest poem, the greatest drama ever written! Excellent census map, which marks the center of population of America with a literal star, and which, at the curtain of each act, the lapse of each ten years, advances this star with the progress of the drama, westward, westward!

WHY THIS AVERAGE LINE TOOK THE COURSE IT DID.

The first step of this star of empire (that concluded in 1800) barely removed it from its initial point upon the Chesapeake. The direction was toward the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. The government at Washington, young as it was, knew that the Ohio River, reached from the North by a dozen trails from the Great Lakes, and running out into that West which even then was coveted by three nations, was of itself a priceless possession. It was a military reason which first set moving the Pennsylvania hotbed of immigrants. The restless tide of humanity spread from that point according to principles as old as the world. Having a world before them from which to choose their homes, the men of that time sought out those homes along the easiest lines. The first thrust of the outbound population was not along the parallels of latitude westward, as is supposed to have been the rule, but to the south and southeast, into the valleys of the Appalachians, where the hills would raise corn, and the streams would carry it. The early emigrants learned that a raft would eat nothing, that a boat ran well down-stream. Men still clung to the seaboard region, though even now they exemplified that great law of population which designates the river valleys to be the earliest and most permanent centers of population. The valleys of Virginia and Maryland caught the wealthiest and most aristocratic of the shifting population of that day. Daniel Boone heard the calling of the voices early, but not until long after men had begun to pick out the best of the farming-lands of North and South Carolina and lower Virginia. The first trails of the Appalachians were the waterways, paths which we do not follow or parallel, but intersect in our course when we go by rail from the Mississippi valley to that first abiding-place of the star.

Early Pioneers on the Blue Ridge.