USEFUL INVENTIONS

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railways alarmed the people of Baltimore lest Philadelphia steal its western trade, and they decided to build a railroad to some point on the Ohio River. Work on it was begun in July, 1828, and this was the origin of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The first steam locomotive was brought from England in 1829, where experiments in steam railways had been in progress for over ten years, but it proved a failure. In 1831, however, a locomotive was success

Railways.

fully used in South Carolina, and within a few years others were in operation in various parts of the country. But for years after this beginning many of the cars, even on the steam roads, were still drawn by horse power. The roads were owned by the state and the cars and engines by individuals or corporations. Any one owning a car or an engine had the use of the road. The engines were rude machines compared with those of our own times, but they went faster than the horses, and this caused much confusion. Eventually the railroads passed into the hands of private corporations, and horses were everywhere supplanted by the steam engine.

Some of the greatest inventions of our modern civilization belong to this period. The rapid progress in steam navigation by land and water brought about a wonderful stimulus in manufacturing and created a great demand for labor-saving machinery. Hence came the sewing-machine, the threshing-machine, the mower Inventions. and reaper, and a few years later the telegraph and

many other inventions of great usefulness. The first flannel made by machinery was produced in Massachusetts in 1824; the first illuminating gas was made from coal in New York in 1827. Thus one invention followed another, and they played a great part in laying the foundations of our present industrial prosperity.

In books and literature the country was making a famous beginning. The newspapers, numbering two hundred at the beginning. of the century, seventeen of which were dailies, had now greatly increased in number; but their subscription rates were still high, as printing was a cumbersome business, the modern steam press being yet a thing of the future. The majority of the people did not take a newspaper. The postmaster was often the only one in a town who took a paper, and on its arrival the villagers would gather about him to hear him read the news.

Some of the most famous American authors were writing during

Literature.

this period. To the older set belonged Washington Irving,1 James Fenimore Cooper, Fitz-Greene Halleck, William Cullen Bryant, and Noah Webster.2 These were all famous before the close of the first quarter of the century. Next came the galaxy of literary men born in the early part of the century: Henry W. Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, John G. Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mrs. Sigourney, and N. P. Willis, . each of whom had published one or more books by 1830. Many of these books, as well as their authors, are world-famous, and have taken a permanent place in our literature. Henceforth the curt remark of Sidney Smith, "Who reads an American book?" could be readily answered in a single word, everybody.

NOTES

Boundaries. - Two important boundary lines were agreed on while Monroe was President. The boundary between the United States and British America

west of the Great Lakes was fixed in 1818. From the Lake of the Woods the forty-ninth parallel was made the boundary westward to the summit of the Rocky Mountains. West of this lay the Oregon country extending to the Pacific and claimed by both the United States and England, and it was decided that both occupy it jointly for ten years; but twenty-eight years elapsed before the ownership was settled.

In 1819 the United States purchased East and West Florida from Spain for $5,000,000. Before this the United States had claimed that Texas was a part of the Louisiana purchase; but this claim was now given up and the boundary decided on was as follows: The Sabine River from the Gulf to 32° and thence northward to the Red River, up the Red River to the one hundredth meridian, north to the Arkansas River, up this river to the crest of the Rocky Mountains, north to 42°, and west on this parallel to the Pacific. Thus the United States did not reach the Pacific at any point. The Pacific slope north of 42° belonged to the Oregon country, and south of 42° were the possessions of Mexico, known as the California country. The United States did not take possession of Florida until 1821, when Andrew Jackson became the first governor.

Migration to the West. A wonderful movement of the population to the West began soon after the war with England had closed. Every road leading westward from the East was covered with lines of moving wagons, plodding their weary way over hills and mountains, streams and valleys. At Haverhill, Massachusetts, 450 emigrants passed through the town in thirteen days. At Easton, Pennsylvania, 511 wagons, bearing over 3000 persons, passed in one month. These were moving to the great valley of the Ohio River, and in the

1 Irving was born in 1783, on the day that Washington made his triumphal entry into New York, and was one of the first to receive his name.

2 Webster published his Dictionary in 1828.

South a similar movement to the new states of Alabama and Mississippi was going on.

A farmer wishing to better his worldly condition would sell all his goods that he could not take with him, and provide himself with a strong, light wagon, covered with canvas. In this he would pack his goods, leaving only room enough for himself and his family. Thus equipped they would bid adieu to old neighbors, friends, and kindred, often to meet them no more in this life, and start out upon the long and toilsome journey of hundreds of miles through the wilderness. Sometimes whole communities went together and settled in the same neighborhood in the West; but more frequently they moved by isolated families. Arriving in the western wilderness, the pioneer would purchase a quarter section of land of the government, of some land company, or of some settler who had preceded him and failed, paying two or three dollars an acre, on the installment plan. If the land were wholly unimproved, the family would live in the moving wagon until a cabin could be built. The cabin was made of logs, notched at the ends so as to fit at the corners, and laid one above another until the house was about ten feet high. There was but one room, one door, and one window. The door was made of rough boards swung on leather hinges, and opposite the door was left an open space on the ground for a fireplace, the chimney being built outside of flat sticks like laths, and plastered with mortar. The floor was made of planks hewn out with the ax, and the roof of lighter planks resting on rafters made of saplings. In such a home many a good family lived for ten or twenty years, the ancestors of many of the leading men of the nation to-day. The cabin built, the pioneer would begin battling with the forest, clearing a few acres each year, carrying his grain perhaps twenty miles on horseback to the nearest mill. Soon his land would become more productive; and at length, if thrifty and industrious, he would build a good house and abandon the cabin. Other movers would settle near, then a town would be founded, and another, and another, and eventually a railroad would be built through the new settlement. The community is transformed in twenty-five years; the markets are near, the comforts of life have multiplied, the farm of the first settler is now worth thousands of dollars, and he has added other hundreds of acres to it. His children settle on the farm or enter the business or the professional world, and the "old settler" spends his declining years amid peace and plenty; and he gathers his grandchildren about him and tells of the days of long ago, of the long journey in the moving wagon, and of the time when the forest frowned on every side and the wolves howled about his lonely cabin in the wilderness.