the Ohio to Pittsburg, in those days when canoes bore their precious tons of freight? Compared to the number of persons engaged in it, the old trade (in today's markets) would be considered a hundred per cent more remunerative.
The burdens those long canoes could bear should not be underestimated. When Washington made his journey down the Ohio in 1770 he "embarked in a large canoe," October 20, at Pittsburg, "with sufficient store of provisions and necessaries, and the following persons, besides Dr. Craik and myself, to wit: Capt. Crawford, Joseph Nicholson, Robert Bell, William Harrison, Charles Morgan and Daniel Rendon, a boy of Capt. Crawford's. . ."
In the era of conquest the canoe played an important part in transporting small bodies of men swiftly and, which was frequently not less important, silently, to their destinations. But now it was that the heavy barge acquired importance as a factor in the making of the West. It was the quarter-master's and commissariat's sole reliance, and in these great clumsy hulks which floated with the current, sometimes
