, had a population of only twenty-two thousand,
including many French and Spanish settlers and traders. But in 1818 it
had a population of more than sixty thousand, and was asking Congress
for legislation under which the most densely inhabited portion should be
set off as the State of Missouri. Thus the Old Northwest was not merely
losing its frontier character and taking its place in the nation on
a footing with the seaboard sections; it was also serving as the open
gateway to a newer, vaster, and in some respects richer American back
country.

In the main, southern Indiana and Illinois--as well as the
trans-Mississippi territory--drew from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia,
and the remoter South. North of the latitude of Indianapolis and St.
Louis the lines of migration led chiefly from New England, New York, and
Pennsylvania. But many of the settlers came, immediately or after only
a brief interval, from Europe. The decade following the close of the war
was a time of unprecedented emigration from England, Scotland, Ireland,
and Germany to the United States; and while many of the newcomers
found homes in the eastern States, where they in a measure offset the
depopulation caused by the westward exodus, a very large proportion
pressed on across the mountains in quest of the cheap lands in the
undeveloped interior. During these years the western country was
repeatedly visited by European travelers with a view to ascertaining its
resources, markets, and other attractions for settlers; and emigration
thither was powerfully stimulated by the writings of these observers, as
well as by the activities of sundry founders of agricultural colonies.

"These favorable accounts," wrote Adlard Welby, an Englishman who made a
tour of inspection through the West in 1819, "aided by a period of
real privation and discontent in Europe, caused emigration to increase
tenfold; and though various reports of unfavorable nature soon
circulated, and many who had emigrated actually returned to their
native land in disgust, yet still the trading vessels were filled with
passengers of all ages and descriptions, full of hope, looking forward
to the West as to a land of liberty and delight--a land flowing with
milk and honey--a second land of Canaan." *

* Thwaites, "Early Western Travels," vol. XII, p. 148.

After the dangers from the Indians were overcome, the main obstacle
to western development was the lack of means of easy and cheap
transpo