was
essential to their full and proper growth. The high, forest-clad ranges
of the Appalachians restricted and hampered their mercantile relations
with the older States, and therefore with the Europe which lay beyond;
while the giant river offered itself as a huge trade artery to bring
them close to all the outer world, if only they were allowed its free
use. Navigable rivers are of great importance to a country's trade now;
but a hundred years ago their importance was relatively far greater.
Steam, railroads, electricity, have worked a revolution so stupendous,
that we find it difficult to realize the facts of the life which our
forefathers lived. The conditions of commerce have changed much more in
the last hundred years than in the preceding two thousand. The
Kentuckians and Tennesseans knew only the pack train, the wagon train,
the river craft and the deep-sea ship; that is, they knew only such
means of carrying on commerce as were known to Greek and Carthaginian,
Roman and Persian, and the nations of medieval Europe. Beasts of draught
and of burden, and oars and sails,--these, and these only,--were at the
service of their merchants, as they had been at the service of all
merchants from time immemorial. Where trade was thus limited the
advantages conferred by water carriage, compared to land carriage, were
incalculable. The Westerners were right in regarding as indispensable
the free navigation of the Mississippi. They were right also in their
determination ultimately to acquire the control of the whole river, from
the source to the mouth.

Desire to Seize the Spanish Lands.

However, the Westerners wished more than the privilege of sending down
stream the products of their woods and pastures and tilled farms. They
had already begun to cast longing eyes on the fair Spanish possessions.
Spain was still the greatest of colonial powers. In wealth, in extent,
and in population--both native and European--her colonies surpassed even
those of England; and by far the most important of her possessions were
in the New World. For two centuries her European rivals, English,
French, and Dutch, had warred against her in America, with the net
result of taking from her a few islands in the West Indies. On the
American mainland her possessions were even larger than they had been in
the age of the great Conquisadores; the age of Cortes, Pizarro, De Soto,
and Coronado. Yet it was evident that her grasp had grown feeble. Every
bo