GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCES IN OHIO 489 



size of a farm in Ohio was decreased 29.3 -)- per cent. Particularly in 

 the northern part of the state, throughout the lake-plain belt, specialized 

 and intensive agriculture is now common. 



I believe that farming will continue to be one of Ohio's chief sources 

 of wealth. Two thirds of its surface bears glacial soil which contains 

 an abundant and various plant diet. Improved methods of preparing 

 foods for distant markets, and the promise of these markets becoming 

 more accessible through the Eiver-Gulf-Panama Canal route will stimu- 

 late cultivation. The advantages of the Ohio Eiver as a means of 

 transportation elicited an early response. In 1794 regular trips, one in 

 four weeks by keel sailboats, were begun between Cincinnati and Pitts- 

 burg; 13 this was only six years after the former city was founded. In 

 1801 a one-hundred-ton vessel for sea trade, built at Marietta, made its 

 first trip down the river, loaded with produce; 14 this was the logical 

 shipping route for the surplus products of southern Ohio. 



As early as 1746, six hundred barrels of flour were shipped south- 

 ward from the Wabash country. 15 French affiliation then dominated the 

 Mississippi valley. The French observed the geography of this interior 

 country in approaching it from either the St. Lawrence or the gulf. 

 New Orleans should be a great port. Logically it is the doorway to 

 nearly half of North America, The aggressive Briton built firmly to 

 the north along the Atlantic; he built so well that it would have been 

 folly to rearrange his structure upon falling heir to the rest of the 

 continent. In extending the commercial structure inland he has not 

 neglected even the slightest natural advantage. But after all, physio- 

 graphically, the structure is somewhat awkward, and its maintenance 

 expensive. In the organic world, man alone on occasion ignores physiog- 

 raphy, but in time he finds it to his highest advantage to comply with 

 the principles of topography. The gulf is the natural outlet of a large 

 part of the Mississippi basin. 



13 Henry Howe, "Historical Collections of Ohio," Cincinnati, 1847, p. 215. 

 14 Ibid. 



15 



B. A. Hinsdale, " The Old Northwest," 1889, p. 50. 



