the fitful sailboat.

But the movement by railway and by steamboat was merely a continuation
on a greater scale of what had been going on ever since the
Revolution. The westward movement was begun, as we have seen, not by
foreigners but by American farmers and settlers from seaboard and back
country, thousands of whom, before the dawn of the nineteenth century,
packed their household goods and families into covered wagons and
followed the sunset trail.

The vanguard of this westward march was American, but foreign
immigrants soon began to mingle with the caravans. At first these
newcomers who heard the far call of the West were nearly all from the
British Isles. Indeed so great was the exodus of these farmers that in
1816 the British journals in alarm asked Parliament to check the
"ruinous drain of the most useful part of the population of the United
Kingdom." Public meetings were held in Great Britain to discuss the
average man's prospect in the new country. Agents of land companies
found eager crowds gathered to learn particulars. Whole neighborhoods
departed for America. In order to stop the exodus, the newspapers
dwelt upon the hardship of the voyage and the excesses of the
Americans. But, until Australia, New Zealand, and Canada began to
deflect migration, the stream to the United States from England,
Scotland, and Wales was constant and copious. Between 1820 and 1910
the number coming from Ireland was 4,212,169, from England 2,212,071,
from Scotland 488,749, and from Wales 59,540.

What proportion of this host found their way to the farms is not
known.[31] In the earlier years, the majority of the English and
Scotch sought the land. In western New York, in Ohio, Indiana,