=The Methods of Travel into the West.=—­Many stories giving exact descriptions of methods of travel into the West in the early days have been preserved.  The country was hardly opened before visitors from the Old World and from the Eastern states, impelled by curiosity, made their way to the very frontier of civilization and wrote books to inform or amuse the public.  One of them, Gilbert Imlay, an English traveler, has given us an account of the Pittsburgh route as he found it in 1791.  “If a man ... " he writes, “has a family or goods of any sort to remove, his best way, then, would be to purchase a waggon and team of horses to carry his property to Redstone Old Fort or to Pittsburgh, according as he may come from the Northern or Southern states.  A good waggon will cost, at Philadelphia, about L10 ... and the horses about L12 each; they would cost something more both at Baltimore and Alexandria.  The waggon may be covered with canvass, and if it is the choice of the people, they may sleep in it of nights with the greatest safety.  But if they dislike that, there are inns of accommodation the whole distance on the different roads....  The provisions I would purchase in the same manner [that is, from the farmers along the road]; and by having two or three camp kettles and stopping every evening when the weather is fine upon the brink of some rivulet and by kindling a fire they may soon dress their own food....  This manner of journeying is so far from being disagreeable that in a fine season it is extremely pleasant.”  The immigrant once at Pittsburgh or Wheeling could then buy a flatboat of a size required for his goods and stock, and drift down the current to his journey’s end.

[Illustration:  ROADS AND TRAILS INTO THE WESTERN TERRITORY]

=The Admission of Kentucky and Tennessee.=—­When the eighteenth century drew to a close, Kentucky had a population larger than Delaware, Rhode Island, or New Hampshire.  Tennessee claimed 60,000 inhabitants.  In 1792 Kentucky took her place as a state beside her none too kindly parent, Virginia.  The Eastern Federalists resented her intrusion; but they took some consolation in the admission of Vermont because the balance of Eastern power was still retained.

As if to assert their independence of old homes and conservative ideas the makers of Kentucky’s first constitution swept aside the landed qualification on the suffrage and gave the vote to all free white males.  Four years later, Kentucky’s neighbor to the south, Tennessee, followed this step toward a wider democracy.  After encountering fierce opposition from the Federalists, Tennessee was accepted as the sixteenth state.