over the Allegheny mountains to Brownsville, Pennsylvania; and in 1793 it cost $75 a ton to carry bars of iron from Centre county, Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh. All the roads were uniformly bad. In 1803 the charge for hauling most articles of merchandise from Baltimore to Pittsburgh was $4.50 per hundred pounds and from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh the charge was $5.

It is recorded that an immigrant from Alexandria, Virginia, to the Monongahela valley soon after the Revolution paid $5.33 a hundredweight for hauling "women and goods" between the two localities over Braddock's Road.

In 1817 it still cost $100 to move a ton of freight from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company now performs the same service for a few dollars. About 1890 an old gentleman who had been a merchant wrote to George B. Roberts, then president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, as follows: "Before any canal was made I shipped 800 barrels of flour one winter from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia by wagon, the freight on which was $2,400, being $3 per barrel. That was called back loading, (Conestoga wagons, six horses, and bells.) My first load of goods, 60 years past, cost $4 per 100 pounds from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Having handled Uncle Sam's mail bags for over 61 years consecutively I have taken two bushels of oats, or four pounds of butter, or five dozen of eggs, or two bushels of potatoes, for a letter that came 400 or more miles." Those were the days when it was not required that postage should be prepaid and when the rates were high.

After communication between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had been opened by way of roads and turnpikes, so that wagons and other vehicles could pass over them with reasonable speed, lines of stage coaches were established for the conveyance of passengers and for carrying the mails between the two cities and intermediate points. Ringwalt says: "For many years two great lines of coaches were run between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Starting daily, the three hundred and fifty odd miles between the two cities were passed over in about three days, that is, if the roads were in very good condition, but more

time was usually required. Every twelve miles a change of horses was made, and quickly. No time was lost and no rest was given the traveler. The fare on the coach from city to city varied somewhat, as did the condition the roads were in, or as the rival lines cut the closest on prices. A through-pass ticket from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia was all the way from $14 to $20, which in those days meant more than the same sum does now. There were special rates to emigrants, but they were brought west in large covered wagons, and not on the regular coaches. For twenty-five years emigrant travel formed a big portion of the business along the turnpike. It was mostly from Baltimore, thousands of emigrants landing there, and engaging passage to the West through companies engaged in that business alone." Egle says that in August, 1804, the first through line of coaches from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was established.

Ringwalt further says: "The stage coach feature of the old turnpike is something with such a dash and liveliness about the very thought of it that it awakens our interest. It was truly the life of the turnpike. Dashing along at a gallop the four horses attached to the coach formed quite a marked contrast to the slow-plodding teams drawing the big wagons. Then there was something of more than ordinary interest about the coach itself and the passengers as well." Another writer says: "The driver invariably carried a horn with a very highly pitched tone, which he winded at the brow of the last hill to signalize his approach."

After the National Road and the turnpikes had been built in Pennsylvania a large business was done for many years, and until about the middle of the last century, in driving cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs from the interior and western parts of Pennsylvania, and even from Ohio, to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other eastern markets. The clouds of dust raised by the drovers, the long lines of Conestoga wagons, and the less frequent but more showy stage coaches united to make the thoroughfares of that day real arteries of commerce, which should not be lightly considered in comparison with the more expeditious transportation facilities of the present day.

William H. Speicher, a resident of Stoyestown, Somerset county, writes of the old stage houses as follows: "Stoyestown had several of them. Here passengers secured a hasty meal while a change of horses was made, and the present generation can not realize the commotion that was caused by the arrival and departure of half a dozen stages of rival lines with horns blowing, streamers flying, and horses on the full run. Sometimes as many as thirty stages stopped at one of these hotels in a single day. Most of them were drawn by four horses, but in climbing the mountains six were frequently used. For the accommodation of wagons and drovers the road houses, with large wagon yards, averaged one for every two miles along the road. These were built especially for the purpose and consisted principally of a large kitchen, dining-room, and very large bar-room, the latter also serving as a lodging room for the wagoners and drovers. Six and eight-horse teams were usually accompanied by two men, and all of them carried their own bedding, which was spread out on the bar-room floor before a huge log fire in the chimney place in the winter."

The drover was "the man on horseback" of his day. He was a person of consequence. But he has departed. And the old stage drivers and wagoners! To-day they are scarcely to be found, "most of them having thrown down the reins and put up for the night."

CHAPTER XI.

EARLY NAVIGATION IN PENNSYLVANIA.

IN the early history of Pennsylvania, as of other colonies, the streams played an important part in opening the wilderness to settlement and in promoting intercourse between the pioneers. Afterwards when canals were introduced the rivers were often slackwatered as part of a canal system. The Indians set the pioneers the example of utilizing the streams for transportation purposes, but the Indians did not build bridges or establish ferries. Long before there were roads of any kind in Pennsylvania the Indian paths were supplemented by the Indian canoe, the latter sometimes made of birch bark but more frequently hollowed out of the trunk of a pine tree. But, however made, the Indian canoe was everywhere in use in the navigation of rivers when the white people came to Pennsylvania. Ringwalt says that "the canoe was to nearly all the tribes what the horse was to the Arab." Some of the Indian canoes would carry freight weighing two and three tons. Even larger canoes were sometimes built. After the advent of the whites canoes were in frequent use by the Indians in carrying furs to a market, and by both whites and Indians in transporting the goods. of the Indian traders. The settlers made free use of them.

The first settlers in time substituted skiffs for canoes, and when the streams were wide enough and deep enough and large quantities of agricultural products and other merchandise were to be moved they built rafts, flatboats, Durham boats, and keel boats. Durham boats were so called only in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, and keel boats are associated with the early history of navigation in the western part. These boats were of similar if not of identical construction. Durham boats as well as flatboats were used on the Delaware, Schuylkill, and Susquehanna rivers for many years. Keel boats were in use on the Ohio at Pittsburgh as early as 1792 and at Johnstown

as early as 1816. Under the general term of flatboats we include barges and all forms of flat-bottomed boats that were in use in pioneer times. Boats of this class were wholly used in descending streams of considerable size, including the Ohio, and at the end of their journey were sold for the lumber that was in them. Hulbert says that "the flatboat was the important craft of the era of emigration, the friend of the pioneer. The flatboat of average size was a roofed craft about 40 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 8 feet deep. It was square and flat-bottomed and was managed by six oars." Keel boats were used in both ascending and descending the rivers. They had rounded sides and slightly rounded bottoms, the hull being substantially like that of a canal boat. As they were an important feature of early transportation on the Ohio river, and in the streams tributary to the Ohio itself, further mention of their construction and operation will not be out of place. We remember seeing many keel boats on the Allegheny river about 1840.

Hulbert says: "The keel boat heralded a new era in internal development, an era of internal communication never known before in the Central West. As a craft it is almost forgotten to-day. Our oldest citizens can barely remember the last years of its reign. It was a long, narrow craft, pointed at both prow and stern. On each side were provided what were known as running boards, extending from end to end. The space between, the body of the boat, was enclosed and roofed over with boards or shingles. A keel boat would carry from twenty to forty tons of freight, well protected from the weather; it required from six to ten men, in addition to the captain, who was usually the steersman, to propel it up stream. Each man was provided with a pole to which was affixed a heavy socket. The crew, being divided equally on each side of the boat, 'set' their poles at the head of the boat; then bringing the end of the pole to the shoulder, with bodies bent, they walked slowly along the running boards to the stern, returning quickly, at the command of the captain, to the head for a new 'set.' In ascending rapids the greatest effort of the whole crew was required, so that