constant demand in this country, we hope that those concerned will use all due exertion in pushing this part of our trade, which in time we may presume will become a very considerable object to those engaged in it."
The "Instructions" in The Navigator to emigrants afford a very clear idea of the nature and needs of river travel in the first half-decade of the eighteenth century: The first thing to be attended to by emigrants was to secure a boat, and be on the alert to take advantage of the first flood. Mr. Cramer speaks with emphatic indignation concerning the dishonesty often manifested by the builders of the river boats. He asserts that a great per cent of the accidents which happened on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers were due either to unpardonable carelessness or stinginess of the builder, who either slighted his work or used unfit timber. He earnestly recommends the appointment of boat-inspectors to be stationed wherever boats were built, thereby avoiding many serious accidents caused by unsafe boats. Mr. Cramer attempts to impress upon all who were
