eafter he was fished from the waters downstream,
wet and frightened, but sober.

By 1800, owing to the fact that both the planters and buyers had become
more concerned about the quality of tobacco, rolling tobacco in
hogsheads began to decline sharply, although fifty years later a rare
roller might still be seen on his way to market. The rivers and canals
provided the most typical means of transportation. Wagons were used
primarily as feeders to and from inland waters. The Potomac,
Rappahannock, and York rivers were valuable colonial arteries, but
played a less significant role after the Piedmont became the major
producing area. The James and the Roanoke superseded them as the major
arteries of transportation in the nineteenth century.

The "Rose method" of water transportation, the lashing of two canoes
together, had practically disappeared on the upland waters by 1800,
being replaced by a small open flat-bottomed boat called the bateau,
which carried a load of from five to eight hogsheads. Two planters, N.
C. Dawson and A. Rucker, both of Amherst County, patented a bateau, in
the early 1800's, which was a great improvement over the earlier ones.
This bateau was from forty-eight to fifty-four feet long, but very
narrow in proportion to its length. It was claimed that with a crew of
three men these new "James River Bateaux" could make the round trip
from Lynchburg to Richmond in ten days. They floated down the stream
with ease, but worked their way back upstream with poles. Shortly
before the turn of the eighteenth century canals had been constructed
around the falls from Westham to Richmond, and the upland boats were
able to load and unload their cargoes at the wharves in Richmond. In
1810 it was estimated that about one-fourth of the entire Virginia
tobacco crop came down the James River and through the Westham Canal
into Richmond.

There were land and water routes in the Roanoke Valley that led to
Petersburg. Tobacco was taken all the way to Petersburg by wagon, or
carried by boat from the upper Roanoke and its tributaries to the falls
at Weldon, North Carolina, and from there to Petersburg by wagon. Owing
to the tobacco trade coming down the Roanoke, Clarksville became a
small market town. In the Farmville area many of the planters sent
their tobacco down the Appomattox River to Petersburg, rather than
overland by wagon. Soon after 1800 the Upper Canal Company built a
canal that connected Petersburg with the navi