human improvement to eyes that seek the light We have seen, under the persevering and enlightened enterprise of another State, the waters of our western lakes mingle with those of the ocean. If undertakings like these have been accomplished in the compass of a few years by the authority of single members of our confederation, can we, the representative authorities of the whole Union, fall behind our fellow-servants in the exercise of the trust committed to us for the benefit of our common sovereign, by the accomplishment of works important to the whole, and to which neither the authority nor the resources of any one State can be adequate?"

Nor was this all. It is curious to see that the President's faithful ally, Mr. Rush, Secretary of the Treasury, went far be yond his chief in the tone of his recommendations, and drifted into what would now be promptly labelled as Communism. When we read as an extreme proposition in these days, in the middle of some mildly socialistic manifesto, the suggestion that there should be a national bureau "whereby new fields can be opened, old ones developed, and every labor can be properly directed and located," we fancy it a novelty. But see how utterly Mr. Rush surpassed these moderate proposals in one of his reports as Secretary of the Treasury. He said that it was the duty of government

"to augment the number and variety of occupations for its inhabitants; to hold out to every degree of labor and to every manifestation of skill its appropriate object and inducement; to organize the whole labor of a country; to entice into the widest ranges its mechanical and intellectual capacities, instead of suffering them to slumber; to call forth, wherever hidden, latent ingenuity, giving to effort activity, and to emulation ardor; to create employment for the greatest amount of numbers by adapting it to the diversified faculties, propensities, and situations of men, so that every particle of ability, every shade of genius, may come into requisition."

Let us now turn to the actual advances made under the guidance of Mr. Adams. Nothing in the history of the globe is so extraordinary in its topographical and moral results as the vast western march of the American people within a hundred years. Let us look, for instance, at some contemporary map of what constituted the northern part of the United States in 1798. The western boundary of visible settlement is the Gene

see River of New York. The names on the Hudson are like the names of to-day; all beyond is strange. No railroad, no canal; only a turnpike running to the Genesee, and with no farther track to mark the way through the forest to "Buffaloe," on the far-off lake. Along this turnpike are settlements," Schenectady," "Canajohary," "Schuyler or Utica," "Fort Stenwick or Rome," " Oneida Cassle," " Onondaga Cassle," "Geneva," and Canandargue," where the road turns north to Lake Ontario. Forests cover all Western New York, all North-western Pennsylvania. Far off in Ohio is a detached region indicated as "the Connecticut Reserve, conceded to the families who had been ruined during the war of Independence" — whence our modern phrase "Western Reserve." The summary of the whole map is that the nation still consists of the region east of the Alleghanies, with a few outlying settlements, and nothing more.

Now pass over twenty years. In the map prefixed to William Darby's "Tour from New York to Detroit," in 1818—this Darby being the author of an emigrant's guide, and a member of the New York Historical Society-we find no State west of the Mississippi except Missouri, and scarcely any towns in Indiana or Illinois. Michigan Territory is designated, but across the whole western half of it is the inscription, "This part very imperfectly known." All beyond Lake Michigan and all west of the Mississippi is a nameless waste, except for a few names. of rivers and of Indian villages. This marks the progress—and a very considerable progress-of twenty years. Writing from Buffalo (now spelled correctly), Darby says: "The beautiful and highly cultivated lands of the strait of Erie are now a specimen of what in forty years will be the landscape from Erie to Chicaga [sic]. It is a very gratifying anticipation to behold in fancy the epoch to come when this augmenting mass of the population will enjoy, in the interior of this vast continent, a choice collection of immense marts where the produce of the banks of innumerable rivers and lakes can be exchanged."

Already, it seems, travellers and map-makers had got from misspelling "Buffaloe" to misspelling "Chicaga." It was a great deal. The Edinburgh Review for that same year (June, 1818), in reviewing Birkbeck's once celebrated "Travels in America," said:

"Where is this prodigious increase of numbers, this vast extension of dominion, to end? What bounds has nature set to the progress of this mighty nation? Let our jealousy burn as it may, let our intolerance of America be as unreasonably violent as we please, still it is plain that she is a power in spite of us, rapidly rising to supremacy; or, at least, that each year so mightily augments her strength as to overtake, by a most sensible distance, even the most formidable of her competitors."

This was written, it must be remembered, when the whole population of the United States was but little more than nine millions, or about the number now occupying New York and Pennsylvania.

What were the first channels for this great transfer of population? They were the great turnpike-road up the Mohawk Valley, in New York; and farther south, the "National Road,” which ended at Wheeling, Virginia. Old men, now or recently living-as, for instance, Mr. Sewall Newhouse, the trapper and trap-maker of Oneida-can recall the long lines of broad-wheeled wagons, drawn by ten horses, forty of these teams sometimes coming in close succession; the stages, six of which were sometimes in sight at once; the casualties, the break-downs, the sloughs of despond, the passengers at work with fence-rails to pry out the vehicle from a mud-hole. These sights, now disappearing on the shores of the Pacific, were then familiar in the heart of what is now the East. This was the tide flowing westward; while eastward, on the other hand, there soon began a counter-current of flocks and herds sent from the new settlements to supply the older States. As early as 1824 Timothy Flint records meeting a drove of more than a thousand cattle. and swine, rough and shaggy as wolves, guided towards the

Philadelphia market by a herdsman looking as untamed as themselves, and coming from Ohio-" a name which still sounded in our ears," Flint says, "like the land of savages."

The group so well known in our literature, the emigrant family, the way-side fire, the high-peaked wagon, the exhausted oxen-this picture recedes steadily in space as we come nearer to our own time. In 1788 it set off with the first settlers from Massachusetts to seek Ohio; in 1798 it was just leaving the Hudson to ascend the Mohawk River; in 1815 the hero of "Lawrie Todd" saw it at Rochester, New York; in 1819 Darby met it near Detroit, Michigan; in 1824 Flint saw it in Missouri; in 1831 Alexander depicted it in Tennessee; in 1843 Margaret Fuller Ossoli sketched it beyond Chicago, Illinois; in 1856 I myself saw it in Nebraska and Kansas; in 1864 Clarence King described it in his admirable sketch, "Way-side Pikes," in California; in 1882 Mrs. Leighton, in her graphic letters, pictures it at Puget Sound; beyond which, as it has reached the Pacific, it cannot advance. From this continent the emigrant group in its original form has almost vanished; the process of spreading emigration by steam is less picturesque but more rapid.

The newly published volumes of the United States Census for 1880 give, with an accuracy and fulness of detail such as were before unexampled, the panorama of this vast westward march. It is a matter of national pride to see how its everchanging phases have been caught and photographed in these masterly volumes, in a way such as the countries of the older world have never equalled, though it would seem so much easier to depict their more fixed conditions. The Austrian newspapers complain that no one in that nation knows at this moment, for instance, the centre of Austrian population; while the successive centres for the United States are here exhibited on a chart with a precision as great, and an impressiveness to the imagination as vast, as when astronomers represent for us the successive

positions of a planet. Like the shadow thrown by the hand of some great clock, this inevitable point advances year by year across the continent, sometimes four miles a year, sometimes. eight miles, but always advancing. And with this striking summary the census report gives us a series of successive representations on colored charts, at ten-year intervals, of the gradual expansion and filling in of population over the whole territory of the United States. No romance is so fascinating as the thoughts suggested by these silent sheets, each line and tint representing the unspoken sacrifices and fatigues of thousands of nameless men and women. Let us consider for a moment these successive indications.

In the map for 1790 the whole population is on the eastern slope of the Appalachian range, except a slight spur of emigra

MAP SHOWING THE MOVEMENT OF THE CENTRE OF POPULATION WESTWARD ON THE THIRTY-NINTH PARALLEL.

tion reaching westward from Pennsylvania and Virginia, and a detached settlement in Kentucky. The average depth of the strip of civilization, measuring back from the Atlantic westward, is but three hundred and fifty-five miles. In 1800 there is some increase of population within the old lines, and a western movement along the Mohawk in New York State, while the Kentucky group of inhabitants has spread down into Tennessee. In 1810 all New York, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky are well sprinkled with population, which begins to invade southern Ohio also, while the territory of Orleans has a share; although Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, the Mississippi territory—including Mississippi and Alabama-are still almost or quite untouched.