or lodging, the charge was only eight dollars. [Footnote: Ill.
Monthly Magazine, II., 53.] In 1823 the cost of passage from
Cincinnati to New Orleans by steamboat was twenty-five dollars; from
New Orleans to Cincinnati, fifty dollars. [Footnote: Niles'
Register, XXV., 95.] In the early thirties one could go from New
Orleans to Pittsburgh, as cabin passenger, for from thirty-five to
forty-five dollars. [Footnote: Emigrants' and Travelers' Guide
through the Valley of the Mississippi, 341.]




CHAPTER VI

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST (1820-1830)


Arrived at the nearest point to his destination on the Ohio, the
emigrant either cut out a road to his new home or pushed up some
tributary of that river in a keel-boat. If he was one of the poorer
classes, he became a squatter on the public lands, trusting to find
in the profits of his farming the means of paying for his land. Not
uncommonly, after clearing the land, he sold his improvements to the
actual purchaser, under the customary usage or by pre-emption laws.
[Footnote: Hall, Statistics of the West, 180; Kingdom, America, 56;
Peck, New Guide for Emigrants to the West (1837), 119-132.] With the
money thus secured he would purchase new land in a remoter area, and
thus establish himself as an independent land-owner. Under the
credit system [Footnote: Emerick, Credit and the Public Domain.]
which existed at the opening of the period, the settler purchased