The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-07


 stage coaehes-men who carried large sums of money with them for the pur- chase. of lands-armed themselves with dozen or 20 pistols in a belt, and fupon occasion used them all.
 But the stage-coach travel was the | least of the traffic over the national road Great numbers of men went back and forth on horseback. carrying each a pair of saddle-bags as his only luggage. still more important was the wagon traffic. There were multi tudes of emigrants who had loaded all they possessed in the world into can vas-covered wagons and had set out for the land of promise.
 There were also great freight-wag- ons engaged in hauling goods west ward for the storekeepers who had closely followed the emigrants, to sell in the little villages and hamets of the new country. These freight Wag- ons carried as much as 5000 pounds of | freight each, and each was drawn by four or six horses Both the wagon CTS and the horses must be housed and fe6 on the journey. and for their ac- con modation wagon-houses, as they were called were sut up all along the road These wagon houses were often no more than mile or two apart, and they did q thriving business. They had vast stables and still larger stable yards, where the horses could be cur- Tried, washed and shod, for there was q smithy Ut almost every one of them.
 The accommodations for the men who drove the teams were far less elaborate. They were rough hardy men. unused to luxury They were satisfied with the eoarsest kind of food if only there was enough of it to meet the excessive demands of their ap- petites; and usually they preferred to sleep in their own wagons, except when the weather was severely cold. Then they slept, as the more aristo- cratic stage coach passengers did. at the inns, upon pallets in common room. There were two things which the wagoners peremptorily demanded, and those two things every wagon- house supplied. One was whisky and the other an abundant fire
 | It was in the wagon-houses along the national road that coal, burned in grates first came into general use. In the mountainous part of the road, where coal was abundant and cheap, there were grates in many of the wag- on-houses that would hold four bush els each. One such still exists, al- though nobody thinks of filling 1t now,
 Farther west, where coal had not yet come into use, there were vast fire places, eight or ten feet wide, four or five feet deep and six or seven feet high.
 Into these huge bacldogs were drawn by oxen or horses. On top of these backlogs-three or four feet in thick ness-a second log foot or two in dla- smaller dimensions, surmounted that. On the great ardirons in front hall a cord of wood was piled 2. and fired. With such fire going, even the larg- i est and windiest of the wagon-house (rooms was made reasonably comfort able in the seyerest weather of the winter.
 There was still another traffic of im- portance over the national road Great herds of cattle, horses. and hogs were sent west to stock the rapidly increas- 1 ing farms, and their hoofs often con verted the worst stretches of the road into well-nigh impossible quagmires. Often stage coaches, whose drivers were required to make time on pain of discharge for any failure to do so, were compelled to stop until path way could be made for them through these vast herds of migrating animals.
 Without doubt the national road contributed nightly to the winning of the, West from condition of wilderness to one of prosperous agri- culture. But it's days were number ed with the coming of the railroad.- George Cary Eggleston in the Youths Companion.