s long,
while the latter was one hundred and fifty miles long. Roads of a like
character connected Kaskaskia and Cahokia.(216)

A party of more than one hundred and fifty, which came from Virginia to
the New Design settlement in 1797, set out from the south branch of the
Potomac. They came from Redstone (now Brownsville), on the Monongahela, to
Fort Massac, on flat-boats, and then by land, in twenty-one days, to New
Design. The summer was wet and hot, a malignant fever broke out among the
newcomers, and one-half of them died before winter. The old settlers were
not affected by the fever, but they were too few to properly care for so
many immigrants.(217)

Commerce in Illinois was in its infancy. Some cattle, corn, pork, and
various other commodities were sent at irregular intervals to New
Orleans.(218) The fur trade was carried on much as under the French
regime. Salt was made at the salt springs on Saline Creek, the labor being
performed chiefly by Kentucky and Tennessee slaves under the supervision
of contractors who leased the works from the United States. The
contractors agreed to sell no salt at the works for more than fifty cents
per bushel, but by means of silent partners to whom the entire supply was
sold, the price was sometimes raised as high as two dollars per
bushel.(219) The commerce of the West suffered from a lack of vessels
going from New Orleans to Atlantic ports, and as a result corn sold in New
Orleans at fifty cents per bushel in 1805, while in some of the Atlantic
ports it sold for more than two dollars. At the same time the West had a
good crop, and Kentucky alone could have spared five hundred thousand
bushels of corn, if it could have been shipped.(220)

To secure laborers was difficult. A petition of 1796 said that farm
laborers could not be secured for less than one dollar per day, exclusive
of washing, lodging, and boarding; that every kind of tradesman was paid
from one dollar and a half to two dollars per day, and that at these
prices laborers were scarce. Labor was cheaper on the Spanish side of the
Mississippi, because of the larger proportion of slaves.(221) These wages
were doubtless high in comparison with those paid in the East, just as the
one dollar per day and board paid at the Galena lead mines in 1788 was
more than double the wages then paid in New England,(222) but an Illinois
price list of 1795 shows that the wages of 1796 were by no means
comparable to those of today in purch