Millions in Tassel 137 



current of corn wealth? There were four natural gateways 

 through which it might be brought to the seaboard. These 

 were the four main routes through which settlers had moved 

 into the Great Valley. There was the Warriors Path, or 

 Wilderness Road, through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. 

 There was the route across the Great Kanawha to Boones- 

 boro; there were the road to Pittsburgh on the Ohio, and the 

 road through the Mohawk and Genesee Valleys to Buffalo 

 and the lakes. The last, through level country, offered fewer 

 obstacles in development as a canal route. Let the wheat, corn 

 and pork come that way to enrich the New York merchants, 

 instead of being sent to the Gulf, and then reshipped from 

 New Orleans. 



The Erie Canal was opened in 1825. Albany declared a 

 holiday on the day in October when the Seneca Chief made 

 the first trip from the Great Lakes to the Hudson. There was 

 a procession of decorated carts loaded with produce brought 

 from western farms. 



The canal boats which brought the wealth of the west to 

 the east passed, at the locks, other barges moving slowly west- 

 ward with kegs of nails, plows and farm tools, furniture, clocks 

 and yard goods. Henry Clay's American system was working. 

 The east manufactured for sale to the west, and was repaid 

 in food. In New York State the subsistence farm was a thing 

 of the past. 



Still the tide of migration moved on. Every country in 

 Europe added to it. The news of fertile and cheap cornland 

 had spread around the globe, kindling the imagination of 

 poets and startling peasants out of their apathy. Why, in that 

 country, it was reported, a man could plow a furrow forty 

 miles long. When you broke the prairie sod and planted the 

 American corn you were sure of a harvest. Corn couldn't fail. 

 Later, when the corn had ravished land of its superabundant 

 strength, you could sow wheat. There was no possibility of 

 hunger in America. 



Every packet to Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Balti- 



