The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1884-06-14

east of the Alleghanies, with few outly-
ing settlements, and nothing more.
Now pass over twenty years. In the
map prefxed to William Darby's Tour
from New York to Detroit, in 1818-this
Darby, being the author of an emigrant' S
guide and member of the New York His
torical Society-we find no state west of
the Mississippi except Missouri, and scarcely
any towns in Indiana or Illinois. Mich
igan Territory is designated, but across the
whole western half of it is the inscription,
''This part very imperfectly known" All
beyond Lake Michigan and all west of the
Mississippi is nameless waste, except for
few names of rivers and of Indian vii
lagos. This marks the progress-and a
very considerable progress-oftwenty years.
Writing from Buffalo (now spelled cor
rectly), Darby says: "The beautiful and
highly cultivated lands of the strait of Erie
are now specimen of what in forty years
will be the landscape from Erie to Chicago.
1t is very gratifying anticipation to be-
hold in fancy the epoch to come when this
augmenting mass of the population will
enjoy, in the interior of this vast continent,
a choice collection of immense marts where
the produce of the banks of innumerable
rivers and lakes can be exchanged"
Already, it seems, travellers and map
makers had got from misspelling ''Buffa-
loe" to misspelling "Chicaga" 1t was a
great deal. The Edinburgh Review for
that same year (June, 1918, in reviewing
Birkbeck's once celebrated Travels in
America, said:
"Where is this prodigious increase of num-
bers, this vast extension of dominion, to end
| What bounds has nature set to the progress
of this mighty nation? Let our jealousy burn
as it may, let our intolerance of America be
as unreasonably violent as we please, still it is
plain that she is power in spite of us, rap
idly rising to supremacy; or, at least, that
each year so nightly augments her strength
as to overtake, by a most sensible distance,
even the most formidable of her competitors. u
This was written, it must be remembered,
when the whole population of the United
States was but little more than nine mil
lions, or about the present population of
New York and Pennsylvania taken to-
gether.
What were the first channels for this
great transfer of population? The great
turnpike road up the Mohawk Valley, in
New York; and farther south, the "Na-
tional Road, /" which ended at Wheeling,
Va. Old men, now or recently living
as, for instance, Mr.. Sewall Newhouse, the
! ttffa&pner and trap-maker of Oneida-can
recall the itongl lines of broad,wheeled wac
ons, drawn by ten II o.
teams sometimes conn., 1use s 3,..:s
the stages, six of which le sometimes in
sight at once; the casualties, the break
downs, the sloughs of despond, the passen-
gers at work with fence rails to pry out the
vehicle from mud hole These sights
now disappearing on the shores of the Pa.
cifc, were then familiar in the heart OF
what is now the East This was the tide
flowing westward; while eastward, ON the
other hand, there soon began a counter
current of focks and herds sent from the
new settlements to supply the older States
AS early as 1924 Timothy Flint records
meeting drove of more than thousand
cattle and swine, rough and shaggy as
wolves, guided toward the Philadelp phia
market by herdsman looking as untamed
as themselves, and coming from Ohio-"a
name which still sounded in our ears,
Flint says, ''like the land of savages."
The group so well known in our litera.
ture, the emigrant family, the wayside fire
the high-peaked wagon, the exhausted
oxen, this picture recedes steadily in space
as we come nearer to our own time. In
1888 it set off with the first settlers from
Massachusetts, to seek Ohio; in 1898 il
was Just leaving the Hudson to ascend the
Mohawk river; in 1915 the hero of Ld,crii,
Todd saw it at Rochester, n Y; in 1918
Darby met it near Detroit, Michigan; in
1924 Flint saw it in Missouri; in 1881
Alexander depicted it in Tennessee; in / 84a
Margaret Fuller Ossoi sketched it beyond
Chicago, Illinois; in 1856 1 myself saw il
in Nebraska and Kansas; in 1864 Clarence
King described it in his admirable sketch
Way-iSide Pixies, in California; in 1873:
Mrs. Leighton in her charming letters pic
lures it at Puget Sound; beyond which, a,
it has reached the Pacific, it can not ad
vance. From this continent the emigran
group, in its original form, has almost van
ished; the process of spreading emigration
by steam is less picturesque, but more rapid
The newly published volumes of the
United States Census for 1880 give, will
an accuracy of detail such as the worlC
never before saw, the panorama of this vas
westward march. 1t is matter of nationa
pride to see how its ever-changing phase.
have been caught and photographed il
these mastery volumes, in way such a:
the countries of the older world have neve
equalled, though it would seem so mucl
easier to depict their more fixed conditions
The Austrian newspapers complain that n,
one in that nation knows at this moment
for instance, the centre of Austrian popula
ton; while the successive centres for tn,
United States are here exhibited on char
with precision as great, and an impres
siveness to the imagination as vast, as whei
astronomers represent for us the successive
positions of planet. Like the SHADOW
thrown by the hand of some great clock
this inevitable point advances year by yea
across the continent, sometimes four mile
year, sometimes eight miles, but alway
advancing. And with this striking sum
mary, the census report gives us series Of
successive representations on colored charts
at ten-year intervals, of the gradual expan
sion and filing in Of population over tn,
whole territory of the United States. NJ
romance is so fascinating as the thought
suggested by these silent sheets, each lin
and tint representing the unspoken sacri
fees and fatigues Of thousands of nameles
men and women. Let us consider for