The chief highway was the Ohio River; for to drift down stream in a scow was easier and quicker, and no more dangerous, than to plod through thick mountain forests.  Moreover, it was much easier for the settler who went by water to carry with him his household goods and implements of husbandry; and even such cumbrous articles as wagons, or, if he was rich and ambitious, the lumber wherewith to build a frame house.  All kinds of craft were used, even bark canoes and pirogues, or dugouts; but the keel-boat, and especially the flat-bottomed scow with square ends, were the ordinary means of conveyance.  They were of all sizes.  The passengers and their live stock were of course huddled together so as to take up as little room as possible.  Sometimes the immigrants built or bought their own boat, navigated it themselves, and sold it or broke it up on reaching their destination.  At other times they merely hired a passage.  A few of the more enterprising boat owners speedily introduced a regular emigrant service, making trips at stated times from Pittsburg or perhaps Limestone, and advertising the carriage capacity of their boats and the times of starting.  The trip from Pittsburg to Louisville took a week or ten days; but in low water it might last a month.

    Numbers of the Immigrants.

The number of boats passing down the Ohio, laden with would-be settlers and their belongings, speedily became very great.  An eye-witness stated that between November 13th and December 22d, of 1785, thirty-nine boats, with an average of ten souls in each, went down the Ohio to the Falls; and there were others which stopped at some of the settlements farther up the river. [Footnote:  Draper MSS., Massachusetts Gazette, March 13, 1786; letter from Kentucky, December 22, 1785.] As time went on the number of immigrants who adopted this method of travel increased; larger boats were used, and the immigrants took more property with them.  In the last half of the year 1787 there passed by Fort Harmar 146 boats, with 3196 souls, 1371 horses, 165 wagons, 191 cattle, 245 sheep, and 24 hogs. [Footnote:  Harmar Papers, December 9, 1787.] In the year ending in November, 1788, 967 boats, carrying 18,370 souls, with 7986 horses, 2372 cows, 1110 sheep, and 646 wagons, [Footnote:  Columbian Magazine, January, 1789.  Letter from Fort Harmar, November 26, 1788.  By what is evidently a clerical error the time is put down as one month instead of one year.] went down the Ohio.  For many years this great river was the main artery through which the fresh blood of the pioneers was pumped into the west.

There are no means of procuring similar figures for the number of immigrants who went over the Wilderness Road; but probably there were not half as many as went down the Ohio.  Perhaps from ten to twenty thousand people a year came into Kentucky during the period immediately succeeding the close of the Revolution; but the net gain to the population was much less, because there was always a smaller, but almost equally steady, counter-flow of men who, having failed as pioneers, were struggling wearily back toward their deserted eastern homes.