Grundy County, Ill., 149.] The routes of travel to the western
country were numerous. [Footnote: See map, page 226.] Prior to the
opening of the Erie Canal the New England element either passed
along the Mohawk and the Genesee turnpike to Lake Erie, or crossed
the Hudson and followed the line of the Catskill turnpike to the
headwaters of the Allegheny, or, by way of Boston, took ship to New
York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, in order to follow a more
southerly route. In Pennsylvania the principal route was the old
road which, in a general way, followed the line that Forbes had cut
in the French and Indian War from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh by way
of Lancaster and Bedford. By this time the road had been made a
turnpike through a large portion of its course. From Baltimore the
traveler followed a turnpike to Cumberland, on the Potomac, where
began the old National Road across the mountains to Wheeling, on the
Ohio, with branches leading to Pittsburgh. This became one of the
great arteries of western migration and commerce, connecting, as it
did at its eastern end, with the Shenandoah Valley, and thus
affording access to the Ohio for large areas of Virginia. Other
routes lay through the passes of the Alleghenies, easily reached
from the divide between the waters of North Carolina and of West
Virginia. Saluda Gap, in northwestern South Carolina, led the way to
the great valley of eastern Tennessee. In Tennessee and Kentucky
many routes passed to the Ohio in the region of Cincinnati or
Louisville.

When the settler arrived at the waters of the Ohio, he either took a
steamboat or placed his possessions on a flatboat, or ark, and
floated down the river to his destination. From the upper waters of
the Allegheny many emigrants took advantage of the lumber-rafts,
which were constructed from the pine forests of southwestern New