160 The Winning of the West 



horse wagons, and being exported in ships from 

 New Orleans to all parts of the earth. Not only 

 did the Westerners build river craft, but they even 

 went into shipbuilding; and on the upper Ohio, at 

 Pittsburg, and near Marietta, at the beginning of 

 the present century, seagoing ships were built and 

 launched to go down the Ohio and Mississippi, and 

 thence across the ocean to any foreign port. 16 There 

 was, however, much risk in this trade; for the de- 

 mand for commodities at Natchez and New Orleans 

 was uncertain, while the waters of the Gulf swarmed 

 with British and French cruisers, always ready to 

 pounce like pirates on the ships of neutral powers. 17 

 Yet the river trade was but the handmaid of fron- 

 tier agriculture. The Westerners were a farmer 

 folk who lived on the clearings their own hands had 

 made in the great woods, and who owned the land 

 they tilled. Towns were few and small. At the 

 end of the century there were some four hundred 

 thousand people in the West; yet the largest town 

 was Lexington, which contained less than three 

 thousand people. 18 Lexington was a neatly built 

 little burg, with fine houses and good stores. The 

 leading people lived well and possessed much culti- 

 vation. Louisville and Nashville were each about 

 half its size. In Nashville, of the one hundred and 



16 Thompson Mason Harris, "Journal of Tour," etc., 1803, 

 p. 140; Michaux, p. 77. 



11 Clay MSS., W. H. Turner to Thomas Hart, Natchez, 

 May 27, 1797. 



18 Perrin Du Lac, "Voyage," etc., 1801, 1803, p. 153; Mi- 

 chaux, 150. 



