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probable that this was the greatest service of the keel-boat—to reach the rich interior settlements and carry their imports and exports. The place of the keel-boat is now taken by such packets as the Greenwood and Lorena which bring to Pittsburg the produce of such valleys as the Kanawha and the Muskingum. In this connection it is proper to emphasize a fact suggested elsewhere: that the inhabitants of the Central West, from the earliest times until today, have found the favorite sites of occupation to be in the interior of the country, beside the lesser tributaries of the Ohio.^[1] Thus as the pioneer settlements spread up on the Licking, Muskingum, Hockhocking, Scioto, and Miami, a boat like the keel-boat, which could ply in any season of the year and on the narrow creeks and "runs," was an inestimable boon. Again, take for instance the salt industry, which in the day of the keel-boat was one of the most important, if not the most important, in the Central West; as values were a century ago the best of men did well to "earn his salt." These salt springs

1. Historic Highways of America, vol. i, p. 57.