coal and iron that were to astonish the world. The backwoods of Virginia contained only a straggling village here and there; beyond the Blue Ridge, Indian warfare was still carried on by Daniel Boone and the Cherokees in the cane-brakes of Kentucky; and on the fertile plains of western Tennessee were but a few log huts. Natchez had been settled by a few pioneers; St. Louis had been founded; Pittsburg had not grown beyond the limits of a military post; and Cincinnati, even as late as 1795, contained but 95 log cabins and 500 inhabitants. These western settlements and their affairs were almost unknown to a large portion of the eastern or coast inhabitants. The West was a vast solitude of unbroken forests and the people knew little more about it than about darkest Africa; while beyond the Mississippi buffaloes wandered in herds; the plains stretched for miles unbroken by mountains or forests; the grass grew high and the flowers were beautiful; and the native Indian still had to see his first white man.*

of 100,000 per year during the seven years from 1783 to 1790, it would probably be as near the truth as it is possible to come to estimate the population at 3,250,000, though Schouler estimates it at "somewhat less than three and a half million souls, of whom probably 600,000 men, women and children are held in servitude to white masters.* As will be seen by the table, Virginia, North and South Carolina contained more than a third of the entire population, chiefly because they were renowned as highly productive agricultural regions, and were famous for their crops of tobacco, rice, indigo, pitch and tar, while, on the other hand, New England could grow scarcely enough corn and rye to supply the needs of the citizens.+

McMaster, United States, vol. i., pp. 3-5. On the conditions in the West at this time, see Roosevelt, Winning of the West, vol. iii., chap. i.

†The Table on page 30 of the Statistical Ab

Tennessee

.

96, 540 378,787 141, 885

85,425 68,825

237, 946

340, 120

184, 139

434, 373

59, 096

319, 728

North Carolina South Carolina Georgia..

Total

747, 610

35,691

393,751

249,073

82,548

73,677

3,929, 214

* History of the United States, vol. i., pp. 3-4. † McMaster, United States, vol. i., pp. 9–10.

329

The

Boston, situated on three hills, hills, contained about 2,100 houses with 14,640 inhabitants, and could boast of a rude ferry service between the North End and Charlestown, but it was not until 1786 that the Charles River was spanned by a bridge.* streets of the city were irregular, the sidewalks were unflagged, and the roads in poor condition. In the older portions of the city the houses were mean and squalid, and built entirely of wood and generally unpainted, but on the west side of the town the streets were neater, many of the houses were of brick and were set back in little gardens, thus presenting a beautiful and homelike appear. ance. A few houses were strung along the post-road at Springfield; Lawrence and Manchester were hamlets of only a few houses each; and even as late as 1820 the site of Lowell was a favorite resort for hunters. There were, however, several noted whaling ports, which before the war were highly prosperous, such as Falmouth, Barnstable, Martha's Vineyard, Cape Ann, New London and the most noted, Nantucket, a little town which stood on a strip of land about four miles wide and fifteen miles long. But the war ended the pros

*S. F. Thomas, Reminiscences of the Last Sixty-Five Years, p. 14.

† See Henry Wansey, Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 1794; Drake, Landmarks of Boston; and a Description of Boston: with a view of the Town of Boston, finely engraved, in Columbian Magazine (December, 1787).

Miles, Lowell as it Was and as it Is, p. 10.

perity, at least for Nantucket; her docks and wharves were deserted, grass grew in her streets and things in general were in a sad state of decay.*

Prior to the Revolution, New York contained about 23,000 inhabitants and was the seat of great commercial activity, but when the British evacuated it more than a third of the town lay in ashes, her commerce was gone, her treasury empty and her citizens (at least all except the Loyalists who had remained in the city during the British occupation) were starving in the wilds of New Jersey. In 1786 her population was about 24,500, and there were about 3,500 houses. The city itself covered a small area, being bounded by Anthony Street on the north, Harrison Street on the west, and Rutgers Street on the east, and within its small confines were not only the business and public buildings, but also residences, many of which were surrounded by large gardens. At that time the present Greenwich Street was a beach upon which the seine was regularly drawn; Beekman's swamp was a splendid place for duck shooting, and Berkeley's woods were alive with wild pigeons.†

No effort had been made to eradicate the traces of the fire by erecting houses, and in 1784 the devastated area was in practically the same state

* McMaster, United States, vol. i., pp. 63–64; Brown, History of the Whale-Fishery; Obed Marcy, History of Nantucket Island.

† McMaster, vol. i., pp. 52–53, 64.

of desolation. Below the site occupied by the present city hall was the common, known at the "Flat " or "Vlackte," north of which was a fresh water pond called the Collect, and to the east of which lay Beekman's swamp, where Jacobus Roosevelt erected his tanneries and began the industry of which that section of the city is the centre.* Several hundred horses and cows might have been seen grazing in the open fields about Reade Street, where there was a burying ground for negroes and scarcely a single house.† Orchards and gardens lined the Bowery; near Gramercy Park was Crummashire Hill; the upper end of Broadway above Anthony Street ended in the meadows; and to the west of Canal Street lay the Lispenard meadows, the mecca of sportsmen. Further up on the island were numerous stately mansions, such as the home of Robert Murray at Inclenbergh, the Apthorpe mansion on Bloomingdale road, the Beekman mansion on the East River at Turtle Bay, and the Roger Morris mansion overlooking the Harlem.

The streets of the city were for the most part unpaved, and the few street-lamps of which the city boasted were rarely lighted on wet nights. The majority of the signs on William Street were in Dutch, and a knowledge of that language was indispensable in the transaction of business or

McMaster, vol. i., p. 54.

† Lamb, City of New York, vol. ii., p. 286.

in social life.* There were ferries to Brooklyn consisting of clumsy row boats, flat-bottomed square-end scows fitted up with sprit sails, and two masted boats called periguas. On pleasant calm days there was little danger and the trips might be made with a degree of comfort and some rapidity, but, if the wind blew with the tide or if there were a strong flood or ebb, it sometimes took an hour to cross. These boats transported passengers, freight and cattle, and many of the latter were lost because at times they would all get to one side of the boat and tip it over or they would become frightened and jump or fall out. It was not until the rude steamboats of Fulton made their appearance at New York that there was any comfort in crossing the river.† Fulton, however, was not the first to operate a steamboat. In the latter part of 1787, James Rumsey exhibited a boat on the Potomac which was propelled by means of a steam pump which forced a stream of water from the stern. On August 22, 1787, after

*See Dunlap, History of New Netherlands; Watson, Historical Tales of the Olden Times in New York City and State; Denton, Brief Description of New York; Duer, New York as it was during the latter part of the Last Century; M. L. Booth, History of the City of New York; Valentine, History of the City of New York,

Stiles, in his History of the City of Brooklyn, vol. iii., pp. 504-540, gives much information regarding the Brooklyn ferries. See also An His torical Sketch of Fulton Ferry and its associate Ferries, by a Director (H. E. Pierrepont).

McMaster, United States, vol. i., pp. 435-436Writing to Jefferson January 9, 1785, Madison says: "J. Rumsey, by a memorial to the last

several trials, John Fitch made a successful trip on the Delaware at Philadelphia, in a vessel 45 feet long and 12 feet beam, with an engine having a 12-inch cylinder. In 1788 and 1790 larger vessels were built and throughout the summer one was run as a passenger boat at 8 miles an hour to Burlington, 20 miles distant, to Bristol, Bordentown and Trenton.* In the summer of 1796, Fitch gave the first demonstration of a steamboat with a screw propeller on the Collect Pond, New York. The boat was 18 feet long and 6 feet beam and its boiler was a 10- or 12-gallon iron pot. Before 1800 Elijah Ormsbee, a Rhode Island mechanic, sailed up the Seekonk River in a boat driven by paddles, and Samuel Morey steamed

a

session, represented that he had invented mechanism by which a boat might be worked with little labor, at the rate of from 25 to 40 miles a day, against a stream running at the rate of 10 miles an hour, and prayed that the disclosure of his invention might be purchased by the public. The apparent extravagance of his pretensions brought a ridicule upon them, and nothing was done. In the recess of the Assembly, he exemplified his machinery to General Washington and a few other gentlemen, who gave a certificate of the reality and importance of the invention, which opened the ears of the Assembly to a second memorial. The act gives a monopoly for ten years, reserving a right to abolish it at any time by paying £10,000. The inventor is soliciting similar acts from other States, and will not, I suppose, publish the secret till he either obtains or despairs of them."- Madison's Works (Congress ed.), vol. i., p. 128.

Westcott, Life of John Fitch, Inventor of the Steamboat (1857); R. H. Thurston, Growth of the Steam Engine (1878); Pennsylvania Historical Society Collections, vol. i., p. 34 (May, 1851); McMaster, United States, vol. i., pp. 432-434. Lamb, City of New York, vol. ii., p. 424 et

331

up the Connecticut in a boat of his own design and construction. In 1804 John Stevens built a boat in which he placed a Watt engine and made several trips on the Hudson, and in the same year Oliver Evans ran a paddle wheel vessel on the Delaware and the Schuylkill.*

Further up the State were Albany; Poughkeepsie, which was prosperous enough to support a weekly journal; Troy, a settlement of a few houses, as were also Tarrytown and Newburg. Albany was purely a Dutch town. Its principal streets ran parallel with the river, were wide, unpaved, and during the winter and early spring, when the snows were thawing, heavy with mud. The business district centred about Pearl and Water Streets. The houses, built three sides of wood and the front of brick, were constructed in the Dutch Gothic style, a novel feature being the tin gutters which extended from the roofs over the footpaths and which in rainy weather discharged the water into the unpaved streets. The valley of the Mohawk was still in its wild state. Syracuse was the haunt of wolves and foxes; Oswego was a frontier military post; on the site where Rochester now stands swarmed deer and black bear; and at Saratoga the famous mineral waters were as yet unknown, except possibly to the Indians.†

* McMaster, United States, vol. i., p. 50. Ibid, vol. i., pp. 58-61.