The Mississippi Flows Through Corn Land 131 



years earlier settlers had poured into the Ohio and Illinois 

 country. Men in the sugar camps along the Ohio looked up to 

 see pack-horses moving westward over the frozen trails. 



"Howdy, strangers? Where you folks goin7" 



"Coin' west. Coin' to Louisiany. Coin 7 to farmin' where 

 they say a man's crop can't fail. How fur is it to Louisiany?" 



The expedition of Lewis and Clark financed by Congress 

 for the opening up of the northwest territory was already turn- 

 ing men's minds to the new frontier. 



With that continuous drain on the East it was a wonder 

 there were any people left in New England, New Jersey or in 

 York State. Within the first fifty years after the opening of 

 the Mississippi Valley the new territory gained in population 

 over the increase in all the thirteen original colonies in the 

 first century of the country's development. 



Of the fourteen Presidents between the passing of John 

 Quincy Adams and the advent of Theodore Roosevelt, ten 

 were either born in the Mississippi Valley or had been residents 

 there. 



The tail, which had seemed so outlandishly long to the 

 young men at Williams College, now threatened to wag the 

 dog. 



The trail followed close to the river's edge on the Ohio shore 

 up to Marietta. West Virginia lay over the river. The deep- 

 folded hills forested in chestnut, beech and birch ran down 

 to the giant sycamores along the shore. The deer came down 

 through those forests to drink delicately at the running river, 

 and to nibble the sedge grasses and alder shoots. The deer did 

 not always stop at the river. They swam over, cunningly let- 

 ting the current sweep them in close to the lee of the Ohio 

 shore; then they scrambled out, and up into the tempting 

 cornfields. 



When the Indians had lived along the river, the fields of 

 corn they planted had been smaller, the stalks were not so 

 tall or so strong, nor did they yield as many ears. But the 



