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.
The cotton was sent to New Orleans, where it usually sold for
twenty dollars a hundred weight. From Natchez to New Orleans the
charge for transportation by flatboat was a dollar and a half a