Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's University; Thanks To Alev Akman.

Scanned by Dianne Bean. Proofed by Doris Ringbloom.





THE PATHS OF INLAND COMMERCE, A CHRONICLE OF TRAIL, ROAD, AND WATERWAY

By Archer B. Hulbert




PREFACE

If the great American novel is ever written, I hazard the guess
that its plot will be woven around the theme of American
transportation, for that has been the vital factor in the
national development of the United States. Every problem in the
building of the Republic has been, in the last analysis, a
problem in transportation. The author of such a novel will find a
rich fund of material in the perpetual rivalries of pack-horseman
and wagoner, of riverman and canal boatman, of steamboat promoter
and railway capitalist. He will find at every point the old
jostling and challenging the new pack-horsemen demolishing wagons
in the early days of the Alleghany traffic; wagoners deriding
Clinton's Ditch; angry boatmen anxious to ram the paddle wheels
of Fulton's Clermont, which threatened their monopoly. Such