"It is a feeling of confinement, which begins to damp the spirits, from this complete exclusion of distant objects.To travel day after day, among trees of a hundred feet high, is oppressive to a degree which those cannot conceive who have not experienced it; and it must depress the spirits of the solitary settler to pass years in this state.His visible horizon extends no farther than the tops of the trees which bound his plantation--perhaps five hundred yards.Upwards he sees the sun, and sky, and stars, but around him an eternal forest, from which he can never hope to emerge:---not so in a thickly settled district; he cannot there enjoy any freedom of prospect, yet there is variety, and some scope for the imprisoned vision.In a hilly country a little more range of view may occasionally be obtained; and a river is a stream of light as well as of water, which feasts the eye with a delight inconceivable to the inhabitants of open countries."In direct contradiction to this longing for society was the passion which the first generation of pioneers had for the wilderness.When the population of one settlement became too thick, they were seized by an irresistible impulse to "follow the migration," as the expression went.The easy independence of the first hunter-agriculturalist was upset by the advance of immigration.His range was curtailed, his freedom limited.His very breath seems to have become difficult.So he sold out at a phenomenal profit, put out his fire, shouldered his gun, called his dog, and set off again in search of the solitude he craved.
Severe winter weather overtook Baily as he descended the Ohio River, until below Grave Creek floating ice wrecked his boat and drove him ashore.Here in the primeval forest, far from "Merrie England," Baily spent the Christmas of 1796 in building a new flatboat.This task completed, he resumed his journey.Passing Marietta, where the bad condition of the winter roads prevented a visit to a famous Indian mound, he reached Limestone.In due time he sighted Columbia, the metropolis of the Miami country.
According to Baily, the sale of European goods in this part of the Ohio Valley netted the importers a hundred per cent.Prices varied with the ease of navigation.When ice blocked the Ohio the price of flour went up until it was eight dollars a barrel;whiskey was a dollar a gallon; potatoes, a dollar a bushel; and bacon, twelve cents a pound.At these prices, the total produce which went by Fort Massac in the early months of 1800 would have been worth on the Ohio River upwards of two hundred thousand dollars! In the preceding summer Baily quoted flour at Norfolk as selling at sixty-three shillings a barrel of 196 pounds, or double the price it was bringing on the ice-gorged Ohio.It is by such comparisons that we get some inkling of the value of western produce and of the rates in western trade.
After a short stay at Cincinnati, Baily set out for the South on an "Orleans boat" loaded with four hundred barrels of flour.At the mouth of Pigeon Creek he noted the famous path to "Post St.
Vincent's" (Vincennes), over which he saw emigrants driving cattle to that ancient town on the Wabash.At Fort Massac he met Captain Zebulon M.Pike, whose tact in dealing with intoxicated Indians he commended.At New Madrid Baily made a stay of some days.This settlement, consisting of some two hundred and fifty houses, was in the possession of Spain.It was within the province of Louisiana, soon to be ceded to Napoleon.New Orleans supplied this district with merchandise, but smuggling from the United States was connived at by the Spanish officials.
>From New Madrid Baily proceeded to Natchez, which then contained about eighty-five houses.The town did not boast a tavern, but, as was true of other places in the interior, this lack was made up for by the hospitality of its inhabitants.Rice and tobacco were being grown, Baily notes, and Georgian cotton was being raised in the neighborhood.Several jennies were already at work, and their owners received a royalty of one-eighth of the product.
