32 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



until late in the evening, besides innumerable caravans of 

 horses, mules, cattle, hogs, and sheep." 15 



In 1678 the far west was Deerfield, Massachusetts. In the 

 next generation it was Pittsburgh. Then it was Ohio, the Mis' 

 sissippi, Fort Defiance in Missouri. When the frontiersmen 

 reached the plains country, they were temporarily stopped. 

 They did not know how to deal with the grasslands, so they 

 skipped them and began working eastward from the Pacific 

 Coast. Then there were two frontiers, the Sierra Nevadas 

 and the eastern edge of the Great Plains. Slowly these settle' 

 ments came together like huge pincers. Today there is no longer 

 an American frontier. 



During the western explorations, the quality of the soil was 

 the first interest of the explorers. When Pyncheon returned to 

 Roxbury from his journey to Connecticut, when Boone came 

 back from Kentucky, when Moses Cleaveland returned from 

 the Connecticut Reserve in Ohio, when Lewis and Clark 

 reached home after their journey to the Pacific, the first thing 

 the average man asked was, "What are the soils like? What 

 will they produce?" 1 



The beginning of the westward migration in the late eight' 

 eenth century was the beginning of the great period of Amer' 

 ican agriculture. That is why soil was so important. The mad' 

 ness of looking under every stone for a gold mine, which had 

 almost caused the settlers of Jamestown to starve, had passed. 

 It would be another three'quarters of a century before indus' 

 trial America would be sending out prospectors to scour every 

 hill and river bottom for mineral wealth. The search for good 

 soil explains why the route of migration rarely took the easiest 

 way west. For example, west'bound caravans shunned the 

 quick route to the Ohio Valley through the Great Kanawha 



15 Ibid., p. 331. 



16 A. P. Hulbert, Soil, Its Influence on the History of the United States, Yale 

 University Press, New Haven, 1930, p. 69. 



