136 Singing Valleys 



were too vast for surveying. Many of the pioneers, he re- 

 ported, had not owned twenty dollars in cash when they came 

 west. Still there was little money in circulation. Purchase was 

 by barter and "swaps." 



These men enjoyed a freedom that struck strange to a 

 European. True, each man was perforce his own farmer, 

 butcher, miller, blacksmith and shoemaker. But on his land he 

 was a complete social unit. When a new settler came to him to 

 buy seed corn he could set his own price. His wealth was all 

 under his own control. 



There was no denying the power of Clay's arguments while 

 the waters of the Mississippi continued to float tons of produce 

 to the Gulf. New Orleans, so fed, grew phenomenally. In 

 1831, the year when Lincoln made his trip down-river and 

 wandered along the busy levees, the imports and exports 

 amounted to twenty-six millions of dollars. Five years later 

 they were double that sum. 



The steamboats had a lot to do with it, making two-way 

 travel on the rivers possible. Nicholas Roosevelt's New Orleans 

 puffed and chortled along the reaches of the Ohio from Pitts- 

 burgh, belching wood smoke and cinders over the cornfields 

 on the banks. A lot of people regarded this new invention 

 with suspicion and fear. When Charles Dickens made his 

 American tour he was counseled while traveling on the Missis- 

 sippi to stay aft as much as possible, for "steamboats usually 

 blew up in front." 



With the steamers on the river, besides all the other craft, 

 a man could cut logs for a raft, load this with farm produce 

 and float down to New Orleans to sell crops and lumber in a 

 ready market. Then, if trade was good and he had a taste for 

 luxury, he could buy a return passage on one of the steamboats. 

 Aboard, if he had luck, he could win his passage money at 

 poker or rolling dice. 



It was not likely that the eastern cities would watch the 

 mounting prosperity of New Orleans without wanting to tap 

 some of that rich stream for themselves. How to divert the 



