By Archer Butler Hulbert.

In the study of waterways of westward expansion, the Ohio River—the "Gateway of the West"—occupies such a commanding position that it must be considered most important and most typical. Such is its situation in our geography and history that it is entitled to a prominent place among Historic Highways of America which greatly influenced the early westward extension of the borders and the people of the United States.

The Ohio River was the highway upon which all the great early continental routes focused. Washington's Road, Braddock's Road, Forbes' Road, and Boone's Road—like the Indian and buffalo trails they followed—had their goal on the glories of this strategic waterway. The westward movement was by river valleys.

The dawning of the era of steam navigation cannot be better introduced than by quoting a paragraph from The Navigator of 1811.

"There is now on foot a new mode of navigating our western waters, particularly the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. This is with boats propelled by the power of steam. This plan has been carried into successful operation on the Hudson River at New York and on the Delaware between New Castle and Burlington. It has been stated that the one on the Hudson goes at the rate of four miles an hour against wind and tide on her route between New York and Albany, and frequently with 500 passengers on board. From these successful experiments there can be little doubt of the plan succeeding on our western waters, and proving of immense advantage to the commerce of our country."

These words came true in a miraculously short space of time. In 1811 the first steamboat was constructed at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela. Several others were built soon after, but it was probably fifteen years before steamboats came into such general use as to cause any diminution in the flat and keel-boat navigation.

By 1832 it was calculated that the whole number of persons deriving subsistence on the Ohio including the crews of steam-and flatboats, mechanics and laborers employed in building and repairing boats, woodcutters and persons employed in furnishing, supplying, loading and unloading these boats, was ninety thousand. At this time, 1832, the boats numbered four hundred and fifty and their burden ninety thousand tons. In 1843 the whole number of steamboats constructed at Cincinnati alone was forty-five; the aggregate amount of their tonnage was twelve thousand and thirty tons and their cost $705,000. This gives an average of about two hundred and sixty-seven tons for each boat and about $16,000 for the cost of each.

In 1844 the number of steamboats employed in navigating the Mississippi and its tributaries was two hundred and fifty. The average burden of these boats was 200 tons each and their aggregate value, at $80 per ton, was $7,200,000. Many of these were fine vessels, affording most comfortable accommodations for passengers, and compared favorably in all particulars with the best packets in any part of the world. The number of persons employed in navigating the steamboats at this time varied from twenty-five to fifty for each boat, a total of 15,750 persons employed.

If, in 1834, the number of steamboats on western waters was two hundred and thirty, the expense of running them could be estimated at $4,645,000 annually. In 1844 the calculation was $9,036,000.... It appears that the steamboat tonnage of the Mississippi valley at this time exceeded, by forty thousand tons, the entire steamboat tonnage of Great Britain in 1834. In other words, the steamboat tonnage of Great Britain was only two-thirds that of the Mississippi Valley. The magnitude of this fact will be best appreciated by considering that the entire tonnage of the United States was but two-thirds that of Great Britain, showing that this proportion is exactly reversed in western steamboat trade.

The history of the Ohio Basin river-men, from those who paddled a canoe and pushed a keel-boat to those who labor to-day on our steamboats, has never been written. The lights and shades of this life have never been pictured by any novelist and perhaps they never can be.

The first generation of river men, excluding, of course, the Indians, would cover the years from 1750 to 1780 and would include those whose principal acquaintance with the Ohio and its tributaries was made through the canoe and pirogue. The second generation would stretch from 1780 or 1790 to 1810, and would include those who lived in the heydey of the keel-and flatboat. The third generation would carry us forward from 1810 to about 1850 and in this we would count the thousands who knew these valleys before the railway had robbed the steamboat of so much of its business and pride.

River life underwent a great change with the gradual supremacy of the steamboat in the carrying trade of the Ohio and its tributaries. The sounding whistle blew away from the valleys much that was picturesque—those strenuous days when a well-developed muscle was the best capital with which to begin business. Of course the flatboat did not pass from the waters, but as a type of old-time river-men their lusty crews have disappeared.

In connection with the first generation of river-men social equality was a general rule. There were no distinctions; every man was his own master and his own servant. In the days of keel-boats and flatboats conditions changed and there was a "captain" of his boat, and the second generation of river-men were accustomed to obey orders of superiors. Society was divided into two classes, the serving and the served. With the supremacy of the steamboat this division is reduplicated over and again; here are four general classes, the proprietors, navigators, operators and deck-hands.

The upper ranks of the steam-packet business have furnished the West with some of its strongest types of aggressive manhood. Keen-eyed, physically strong, acquainted with men and equal to any emergency, the typical captain of the first half-century of steamboating in the West, was a man any one was glad to number among his friends and acquaintances.