this period sounded the ax of the pioneer clearing the forest about his
log-cabin, and the rumble of the canvas-covered emigrant-wagon over the
primitive highways which crossed the Alleghanies or followed the valley
of the Mohawk. S. G. Goodrich, known in letters as "Peter Parley," in
his _Recollections of a Life-time_, 1856, describes the part of the
movement which he had witnessed as a boy in Fairfield County,
Connecticut: "I remember very well the tide of emigration through
Connecticut, on its way to the West, during the summer of 1817. Some
persons went in covered wagons--frequently a family consisting of
father, mother, and nine small children, with one at the breast--some
on foot, and some crowded together under the cover, with kettles,
gridirons, feather-beds, crockery, and the family Bible, Watts's Psalms
and Hymns, and Webster's Spelling-book--the lares and penates of the
household. Others started in ox-carts, and trudged on at the rate of
ten miles a day. . . . Many of these persons were in a state of
poverty, and begged their way as they went. Some died before they
reached the expected Canaan; many perished after their arrival from
fatigue and privation; and others from the fever and ague, which was
then certain to attack the new settlers. It was, I think, in 1818 that
I published a small tract entitled, _'Tother Side of Ohio_--that is,
the other view, in contrast to the popular notion that it was the
paradise of the world. It was written by Dr. Hand--a talented young
physician of Berlin--who had made a visit to the West about these days.
It consisted mainly of vivid but painful pictures of the accidents and
incidents attending this wholesale migration. The roads over the
Alleghanies, between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, were then rude, steep,
and dangerous, and some of the more precipitous slopes were
consequently strewn with the carcasses of wagons, carts, horses, oxen,
which had made shipwreck in their perilous descents."