147.] the most important source of supply for the hams and bacon and
salt pork which passed down the Mississippi to furnish a large share
of the plantation food. From Kentucky and the rest of the Ohio
Valley droves of mules and horses passed through the Tennessee
Valley to the south to supply the plantations. Statistics at
Cumberland Gap for 1828 gave the value of live-stock passing the
turnpike gate there at $1,167,000. [Footnote: Emigrants' and
Travellers' Guide to the West (1834), 194.] Senator Hayne, of South
Carolina, declared that in 1824 the south was supplied from the
west, through Saluda Gap, with live-stock, horses, cattle, and hogs
to the amount of over a million dollars a year. [Footnote: Speech in
Senate in 1832, Register of Debates in Cong., VIII., pt. i., 80; cf.
Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., I., 1411.]

But the outlet from the west over the roads to the east and south
was but a subordinate element in the internal commerce. Down the
Mississippi floated a multitude of heavily freighted craft: lumber
rafts from the Allegheny, the old-time arks, with cattle, flour, and
bacon, hay-boats, keel-boats, and skiffs, all mingled with the
steamboats which plied the western waters. [Footnote: Flint,
Recollections of the Last Ten Years, 101-110; E. S. Thomas,
Reminiscences, I., 290-293; Hall, Statistics of the West (1836),
236; Howells, Life in Ohio, 85; Schultz, Travels, 129; Hulbert,
Historic Highways, IX., chaps, iii., iv., v.] Flatboatmen, raftsmen,
and deck-hands constituted a turbulent and reckless population,
living on the country through which they passed, fighting and
drinking in true "half-horse, half-alligator" style. Prior to the
steamboat, all of the commerce from New Orleans to the upper country
was carried on in about twenty barges, averaging a hundred tons
each, and making one trip a year. Although the steamboat did not