edly, one of the influences which secured the west to the Union, and the population which at once poured into the Ohio valley undoubtedly saved the western states in embryo from greater perils, even, than those they had known.

This road, conceived in the brain of Albert Gallatin, took its inception in 1806, when commissioners to report on the project were appointed by President Jefferson. In 1811 the first contract was let for ten miles of the road west of Cumberland, Maryland, which was its eastern terminus. The road was opened to the Ohio river in 1818.

In a moment's time an army of emigrants and pioneers were en route to the west over the great highway, regiment following regiment as the years advanced. Squalid cabins, where the hunter had lived beside the primeval thoroughfare, were pressed into service as taverns. Indian fords, where the water had oft run red with blood in border frays, were spanned with solid bridges. Ancient towns, which had been comparatively unknown to the world, but which were of sufficient commercial magnetism to attract the great road to them, became, on the morrow, cities of consequence in the world. As the century ran into its second and third decades the National Road received an increasingly heterogeneous population. Wagons of all descriptions, from the smallest to the great "mountain ships" which creaked down the mountain sides and groaned off into the setting sun, formed a marvelous frieze upon it. Fast expresses, too realistically perhaps called "shakeguts," tore along through valley and over hill with important messages of state. Here, the broad highway was blocked with herds of cattle trudging eastward to the

markets, or westward to the meadow lands beyond the mountains. Gay coaches of four and six horses, whose worthy drivers were known by name even to the statesmen who were often their passengers, rolled on to the hospitable taverns where the company reveled. At night, along the roadway, gypsy fires flickered in the darkness, where wandering minstrels and jugglers crept to show their art, while in the background crowded traders, hucksters, peddlers, soldiery, showmen and beggars - all picturesque pilgrims on the nation's great highway.

It is a fair question whether our western civilization is more wonderful for the rapidity with which new things under the sun are discovered, or for the rapidity with which it can forget men and things to-day which were indispensable yesterday. The era of the National Road was succeeded in a half a century by that of the railway, and a great thoroughfare, which was the pride and mainstay of a civilization, has almost passed from human recollection. A few ponderous stone bridges and a long line of sorry looking mile-posts mark the famous highway of our middle age from the network of cross-roads which now meet it at every step. Scores of proud towns, which were thriving centres of a transcontinental trade, have dwindled into comparative insignificance, while the clanging of rusty signs on their ancient tavern posts tell, with inexpressible pathos, that

"There hath passed away a glory from the earth."

CHAPTER II.

THE WASHINGTON AND BRADDOCK ROADS.

In considering the rise and fall of the National Road, it is necessary to describe briefly the three great routes from the east to the west which served before its building, and particularly the historic route upon which it was itself built.

It was for the buffalo, carrying a weight of a thousand pounds and capable of covering two hundred miles a day, to mark out the first continental highways of America. The buffalo's needs — change of climate, new feeding grounds and fresher salt licks demanded thoroughfares. His weight demanded that they should be stable, and his ability to cover great distances, that they should be practicable. But one such course was open for passage for the buffalo, and that on the summits of the hills. From the hilltops the water was shed most quickly, making that the dryest land; from the hilltops the snows of winter were quickest blown, lessening the dangers of drifted banks and dangerous erosions.

There were three great routes of the buffalo from the seaboard to the central west; first, through northern New York; second, through southern Virginia and Kentucky; third, through northwestern Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania.

Route one was practically the present course of the New York Central railway. It was the old overland route to the lakes.

Route two ran southwest, through Virginia, between the Alleghanies and Blue Ridge, and turned westward through Cum