The development of the commerce of every country is the resultant of many forces. Social ideals, individual traits and aptitudes, the status of political organization, the legislative policies followed—each of these has had its influence; but they are neither the primary nor the most potent determinants of the nature and scope of a nation’s commerce. Economic conditions are the cause of trade and they most strongly control its growth.

     Social ideals may strengthen the impulse of the individual to trade and cause him to develop mercantile and maritime traits. The history of New England for more than two centuries affords striking confirmation of this truth. The aspiration of a country to become an impregnable naval power will impel the government to give large aid to trade and shipping—a fact amply verified by the history of Japan since 1895, of Germany since 1870, and of England and Great Britain since 1650.

     When social ideals, individual aptitudes and economic conditions harmonize, and are favorable to international commerce, and to the building and operation of ships, as they are to-day, to a marked degree, in Great Britain and Germany, and in a large measure, in Japan, legislation for the promotion of commerce and shipping may be an effective auxiliary; but when these fundamental prerequisites are wanting, as they are in great part in France, laws can accomplish but little. During the latter half of the nineteenth century the social and economic forces controlling the investment of capital and the expansion of industry in the United States brought about a large foreign trade; but ships could not be built profitably for sale

abroad or for operation in competition with the vessels under the flags of other countries. There has been some change in the situation since 1900, and the time may be near, if indeed it be not now at hand, when the American marine can be aided by legislation.

     Analysis of the Forces Controlling Economic Progress.—The economic forces that control the development of industry and commerce are in part natural, or geographic, and, in part, artificial, or of man’s creation. The earth, as the field of human endeavour, broadly controls what man may do; it may bestow free gifts upon mankind; it may, and more often does, place obstacles, more or less difficult to surmount or circumvent, between man and the goal of his efforts; or it may fix definite limits beyond which it is vain to attempt to pass.

     In the early life of the human race geographic control was absolute; with the progress of mankind, the dominance of mind over matter, of man over his physical surroundings, has increased with accelerating speed; so that to-day men are able to live and prosper in regions formerly uninhabitable, and are able to live with far greater comfort than was formerly obtainable. Mechanical power has made numerous forces of nature minister to the wants of man, and has enabled him to free himself from many of the restraints of the world in which he lives.

     Man’s triumph over nature is, however, not complete; and, if it were, the forces of nature and the earth’s material resources would still largely control his life; because he can live only by co-operating with nature. Temperature, winds, ocean currents, soil fertility, mines, forests, land and sea life—these still regulate his economic life and largely mould his character.

     At the time of the settlement of America, three centuries ago, industry and commerce were aided but slightly by the mechanical agencies which now enable men to modify, direct, and turn to the service of mankind the forces exerted by his physical environment. Geographic conditions exercised such a strong influence upon the economic development of America that the history of American commerce should begin with a survey of the geography of the North Atlantic and the eastern part of North America. In making this survey, it will be best to consider the geographic control of both industry and commerce. As commerce is carried on chiefly to aid industry, both must receive attention in this analysis, although the presentation will as far as possible be made with reference to commerce.

     The subject naturally divides itself into two parts: one covering

the period of the seventeenth and the larger portion of the eighteenth century, during which time the region between the Atlantic coast and the Allegheny Mountains was being settled and developed; the other part including the period of the occupation of the great country beyond the Appalachians—the Mississippi Valley and the West. The first period coincides roughly with the colonial epoch, the second with the national era. The mountains had been crossed and settlements had been made in the Ohio Valley, before the Revolution—especially after the French and Indian War—but the real work of occupying the vast trans-Allegheny country was undertaken after the War of Independence. This paper has reference to the period prior to 1789, and is limited to a discussion of the geographic factors influencing the industrial life and the over-sea and intercolonial commerce of the section east of the Alleghenies.

     The geographic factors of control were maritime and terrestrial. The settlement and subsequent development of America were largely influenced by the shape of the North Atlantic, its winds, its currents, and its fisheries. The spread of population along the coast and toward the interior, the industries established in each colony, and their growth or decline, the over-sea and domestic exchange of products-these were largely determined by land factors, by the terrene of the Atlantic slope.

     The maritime factors may be considered first. The narrowness of the North Atlantic and the eastward reach of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland made possible the regular pursuit of the fisheries in American waters by English, Dutch, Portuguese, and French during and after the early years of the sixteenth century. Fishing in America antedated permanent colonization by a full hundred years.

     The Continental Shelf and the Fisheries.—The Atlantic continental shelf of North America, or that part of the uplifted continent that is covered by the sea, slopes gently from the shore seaward approximately to the line of 100 fathoms of ocean depth. From this line the descent is rapid to the abysmal area of the main floor of the Atlantic. On the southeastern edge of Florida, the line of 100 fathoms’ depth runs close to the shore, there being a moderate depression between Florida and the submarine plateau upon which the Bahama Islands are built. Northward from Florida the continental shelf gradually widens with the exception of a slight narrowing of the shelf by the eastward projection of the North Carolina shore above and below Hatteras—the width off Georgia and South Carolina averaging about 100 miles. From New Jersey eastward and northward the shelf rapidly broadens until it reaches its

maximum breadth of about four hundred miles in the banks off Newfoundland, the only areas upon the broad shelf where the ocean is more than 100 fathoms deep being the central part of the broad bay between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence between Cape Breton Island and Newfoundland, and limited portions of the Gulf itself.

     The wealth of fish off the Atlantic coast of America from Long Island to the Grand Banks is the result of two causes: The broad “continental shelf” widening from south of the Nantucket shoals northward and eastward to the Grand Banks gives a large area of shallow ocean and provides a spacious home for the cod, mackerel and other fish of commerce. This home is rendered the more habitable and more populous—especially for the cod—by the cool water brought down from Arctic latitudes by the Labrador Current that flows past Labrador, through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, about Newfoundland, over the Grand Banks, and along Nova Scotia and the New England coast until it is overcome by its opponent, the more powerful north-flowing Gulf Stream.

     The oyster and shad fisheries of the Middle Atlantic seaboard are of much economic value, and there are sea fisheries of importance along the South Atlantic and Gulf States of the United States. The oyster fisheries of Maryland are now of great value; but during Colonial times the seafood products secured along the coasts of the Middle and South Atlantic colonies held a minor rank in comparison with the wealth of fish caught in the cooler waters of the broad northern continental shelf, extending seaward from New England and Canada. When one considers the limited possibilities of agriculture in New England and the wealth of life in the ocean that washes her shores, it is easy to understand why the fisheries and the trade in fish were the most important factor in the economic development of New England throughout the Colonial period.

     Shore Line and Harbours.—The succession of deep bays and prominent headlands along the Atlantic coast north of New Jersey forms a shore line contrasting strikingly with the generally unbroken littoral of New Jersey and of the States to the south of Virginia. From the mouth of the Hudson eastward and to the north the sea has invaded the land, submerged a former coastal plain, and made it a part of the widened continental shelf. The only parts of the former coastal plain now rising above the sea are Long Island, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and the small islands in the vicinity. Indeed, the subsidence of the land northward from Cape Cod was so great as to submerge a large part of the piedmont belt of archæan

rocks adjacent to which the coastal plain had been laid down in a geologically recent period. Although a subsequent slight uplift has reclaimed from the sea a fringe of land along parts of the coast, the net subsidence is such that the rugged coast of New England north of Cape Cod, of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the islands beyond is broken into bays and fiords separated by bold peninsulas and guarded by outlying islands of granitic rock. At some places, as at Mount Desert Island, the mountains rise from the sea; elsewhere the low hills of the piedmont give character to the shore formation.

     From New York toward the south the coast has sunk but little, and the coastal plain, widening southward, intervenes between the sea and the belt of rolling hills forming the piedmont, or Allegheny foothills. Between what are now New Jersey and North Carolina the subsidence was enough greater than it was immediately to the north and south to form the shallow estuaries of the Delaware and Chesapeake. The drowning of the lower valleys of the Delaware and the rivers flowing into the Chesapeake provided numerous navigable waterways across the coastal plain, and gave ample harbours to a large section of country. The beds of these bays are the favourable habitat of the shellfish, the trade in which is of great value.

     The influence of the continental shelf and the Atlantic shore line upon the industrial and commercial development of the American colonies is easily discernible. They account for New England’s long-continued leadership in the fisheries; and they, together with the land factors to be discussed presently, go far to account for the greater attention given by those colonies to shipping and commerce than was given to maritime pursuits by the Middle and Southern colonies.

     Before pointing out in detail the economic results of geographic control, it will be best to consider the more important land influences upon the life and growth of the colonies. The lines of progress taken by the several colonies were determined by land and ocean influences more or less minimized or accentuated by the differences in the social forces dominant in the northern, middle and southern sections of the country.

     The Rivers, the Fur Trade, and Water Power.—The streams afforded or denied access to the unsettled and unexplored land, and were the natural highways through the country after settlements had been established; they decided the rapidity or slowness of occupation; they located and conditioned the growth of the towns as centres of inland trade and as ports of maritime commerce.

     The vain search made by the English, Dutch and French navigators for the Northwest passage around America to the Orient led to the exploration of practically all the large streams from the James to the St. Lawrence. Close after the explorers came the more successful fur-traders, who secured from the savages the second contribution made by America to the wealth of Europe—the gold of the West Indies and the Spanish-American mainland having been the first gift of the New World to the Old.

     The Hudson River became the chief centre of the early fur trade. The noble stream provided a broad highway one hundred and fifty miles inland, and the Mohawk brought the tidal Hudson into easy communication with a large interior section, inhabited by exceptionally thrifty and energetic tribes of Indians. For fifty years the fur trade of the Hudson Valley, and to some extent of the surrounding country, was conducted by the Dutch who placed this trade, at least during the first half of their occupation of the country, ahead even of agriculture.

     While the fur trade of the Hudson exceeded that of other rivers, the difference was mainly in degree. The Connecticut and the lesser streams of New England, the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill, Susquehanna, Potomac, James, and the many tributaries of the Chesapeake floated the peltry-laden Indian canoes down to the interior and coastwise posts of the traders.

     The people of New England did not give so much attention to the fur trade as did the Dutch to the West and South, or as did the French on the North. In the earlier years of their colonial life the Dutch and French could make the purchase and sale of peltries their chief business, because the Hudson and St. Lawrence made that possible. In New England, on the contrary, the rivers, with the exception of the Connecticut, were short and were rendered unnavigable, almost from their mouths up, by numerous rapids and falls. In this regard, however, New England’s limitation was her good fortune. The profits derivable from the fisheries, agriculture, and commerce, and the social benefits resulting from their pursuit, so far exceed those of fur trading that the economic and social progress of a colony is hindered rather than aided by giving much of its energy and capital to trading in furs.

     The fact that most of the streams of New England were small and had rapids or falls near the sea had several consequences. The settlements and towns were located near the ocean, and the early life of New England was carried on largely within sight and sound of the sea. As the settlers advanced inland and occupied the country

for agriculture, they found the soils, which throughout New England were the result of glaciation, to be stony or sandy in many sections and fertile in only limited areas. The gains to be made from farming, while sufficient to cause New England to have a steady development in agriculture, did not so lure men away from the sea as to check the steady and rapid growth of fishing, shipbuilding, and trading. Before the Colonial period came to an end the unrivalled water-power afforded by the New England rivers began to be used to a small extent for industrial purposes. Later, in the early decades of the eighteenth century, when capital had become more abundant and machinery had been improved, this water-power made New England the manufacturing centre of the United States, and gave character to her entire industrial development.

     Glaciation and its Consequences.—The glacial deposits covering New England, New York and northern New Jersey and Pennsylvania determined their soils and largely conditioned their economic activities. In New England the deep covering of glacial material made the country yield moderate or meager returns to agriculture, except in the limited areas of alluvial soil, but to compensate for this parsimony nature was bounteous in her gift of grand forests and of ample water-power. Glaciation remodeled the drainage system, constructed numerous lake reservoirs in the river valleys, forced the streams into new channels, and sent their waters hurrying over rapids and tumbling down cataracts. The till and sand formed a thick sponge that absorbed the water falling in the copious rains and abundant snows, distributed it by filtration slowly to the streams, and gave the rivers a nearly even flow throughout the year. Thus the forests and natural harbours of New England favoured shipbuilding and commerce, while the free gift of water-power, abundant, widely distributed, and reliable, predestined her to an industrial career.

     The results of glaciation were different in New York, northern New Jersey and Pennsylvania from what they were in New England. The débris left by the ice cap as it receded from New England consisted of materials worked up from rocks that made less generally fertile soils than were manufactured from the rocks which were supplied to the ice mill by the section to the west and south of the Green Mountains and the Berkshires. This is especially true of New York State, the river valleys and wide interior of which rank high in agriculture. Northern New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania are less fertile. The water power resulting from glaciation

west of New England was less per unit of area, and was, in most cases, located so far inland from the sea as not to be economically available at an early date.

     The Coastal Plain and Fall Line.—South from the valley of the Hudson the section of country between the ocean and the Allegheny front is separable into three well-marked divisions. Along the Atlantic lies the coastal plain made up of sandy or gravelly soils interspersed with areas of clay and of alluvium. This plain, narrow at the north but widening southward to a breadth of 200 miles—the remnant of one that formerly extended from the Grand Banks to the Gulf of Mexico—was laid down in the geological yesterday under the margin of the sea when the ocean reached inland to the old archæan uplift now represented by the rolling uplands of the piedmont. The submarine plain thus constructed of the materials eroded from the archæan highland was subsequently raised above the level of the sea. A recent subsidence of the coast has restored to the sea a portion of the land in the neighbourhood of the Chesapeake and the lower Delaware and has enabled the ocean to regain more ground than it had lost north of Long Island; but most of the southern half of the plain remains dry land. The sands, gravels and clays of the geologically youthful coastal belt rest upon the lower-lying old rocks of archæan antiquity, and the west-northwest, or inland, margin of the recently-made plain borders directly upon the ancient piedmont.

     The union of these two belts-the coastal plain and the piedmont-is clearly marked by the "fall line." As the rivers that flow across the piedmont pass from the resistent archæan rocks to the easily eroded strata of the coastal plain, rapids and falls of moderate descent are formed. The ocean tides invade each river to the fall line, and make most of the streams readily navigable for the oceangoing ships employed prior to the use of the large modern steamers. The natural and favourable location for a seaport and for a manufacturing city being at or near the head of river navigation for ocean vessels—at the point where there is power for industry and a free highway for commerce—, the fall line from New York south may be traced on the map by a line passing through Trenton on the Delaware, Philadelphia between the Schuylkill and the Delaware, Baltimore on an arm of the Chesapeake, Washington on the Potomac, and Richmond on the James. Further south the fall line passes close to Raleigh, near the Neuse, Columbia on the Congaree, and Augusta on the Savannah. Raleigh is not a river city. Columbia and Augusta are at the head of steamboat navigation, but are situated

too far inland on relatively small streams to have ever been the head of ocean commerce. The earlier and later cities of first importance in the Carolinas and Georgia, where the coastal plain is widest, were located near the sea, e. g., Wilmington, Charleston and Savannah.

     The cities along the fall line from New Jersey to Virginia early became the commercial centres both of the coastal plain, where the earliest settlements and plantations were established, and of the piedmont into which population easily spread by way of the many river valleys. North of Virginia the piedmont, being narrow, readily accessible, and fertile, was settled earlier than it was in and south of Virginia, although the Virginia plantations had overpassed the coastal plain long before the Revolutionary War.

     To the north and east of the Chesapeake, where small-farm agriculture prevailed, the increase and spread of population caused cities to grow up as centres of trade and industry; but in the section of the country where the land was held in plantations, trade did not centre in cities, but was segregated among the plantations and small towns. Baltimore, near the head of the Chesapeake, grew not only because it was the market for Maryland, but also as a result of being an important emporium for the trade up and down the Susque hanna Valley. Even so, it did not rival Philadelphia in rate of growth during the eighteenth century.

     In structure and fertility, the sandy, light soils, the alluvial river plains, and the salt and fresh water marshes of the coastal belt were in sharp contrast with the soils formed from the piedmont gneiss which disintegrated into the heavy clays, such as are found in parts of Virginia, and into the lighter micaceous and sandy clays prevalent in southeastern Pennsylvania. In general, the lands of the coastal plain, with the exception of the limited areas of alluvium, were less fertile and more easily exhausted than were those of the piedmont; but the soils near the sea had the merit of being easily brought into cultivation during those early years of settlement, when the colonists were gaining a sure footing on the edge of the great New World wilderness.

     The first permanent colony in America was planted on the river bottoms and the sandy uplands along the coast and between the rivers of “tidewater” Virginia. Soon thereafter the lands about the Chesapeake in Maryland were settled. On these lands the culture of tobacco in Virginia and of tobacco and cereals in Maryland was easy and profitable; and, although the light soils could not endure the improvidence of plantation farming, there was, at least for

many decades, an abundance of virgin land within the wide plantations or on the frontier to be substituted for the worn-out fields. The early settlers on both banks of the lower Delaware found fertile soils in the alluvium and marl belts along the estuary and tidal river; and prosperous farming antedated Penn’s arrival by more than forty years.

     In the Carolinas and Georgia settlement began along the shores of the broad Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds—then readily entered and traversed by ocean vessels—and at the junction of the rivers with the bays by which the sea indents the coast at numerous places from Cape Fear southward. On the low coast lands rice and indigo were the crops most grown, while from the adjacent sandy uplands the pine forests provided unlimited quantities of naval stores.

     The main products grown or secured from the coastal plain from Delaware Bay to Florida—tobacco, rice, indigo, naval stores—were export commodities. There could be but small market for them in America; if sold at all they must be sent across the sea; hence it was that the Southern colonies had a larger commerce with Europe than did the Middle and New England colonies, despite the fact that the people of the northern settlements had a more diversified industrial life and engaged far more actively in maritime pursuits.

     The Piedmont.—The piedmont extends inland from the ocean to the mountains in New England, and from the fall line to the first distinct mountain ridge. This ridge includes the highlands through which the Hudson has cut its scenic course, the highlands of New Jersey, the range of hills from the Delaware below Easton to Reading on the Schuylkill, the northern half of South Mountain running southwest from Reading toward the Susquehanna Valley, South Mountain extending from the Susquehanna to the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry, and the Blue Ridge, which from the Potomac south presents an unbroken range of mountains that grow higher and broader until their climax is reached in the lofty summits and massive ranges of the Carolinas. From the Hudson to the Potomac the piedmont belt is narrow, and is made up of a rolling country of high average fertility, seldom reaching five hundred feet above sea level. The productive farming and dairying counties of southeastern Pennsylvania—with the exception of those in the Appalachian Valley to be described presently—lie within the piedmont. From the Potomac River to northern Georgia the piedmont is a broad upland country, much of which is between 500 and 1,000 feet above the sea. This wide belt of

well-timbered “foot hills” was but gradually settled and not fully occupied during the Colonial period; indeed, many of the central sections of Virginia and the Carolinas are somewhat sparsely settled even to-day. Its soils average well, though not high, in fertility, but when well tilled they yield good returns. During the first half of the seventeenth century this region furnished furs for export; thereafter lumber and naval stores became most important, while plantations and farms advanced slowly up the river valleys and back from them onto the intervening divides. The first great development of the piedmont in the Carolinas and Georgia came toward the end of the eighteenth century, when cotton became a profitable crop.

     The Appalachian or Great Valley.—West of the Blue Ridge and its northern extensions, and intervening between that range of mountains and the eastern front of the broad Allegheny plateau, lies the Appalachian or “Great” Valley. This remarkable valley extends, with nearly unbroken continuity, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence almost to the Gulf of Mexico. From north to south this intermontane depression includes in turn the lower basin of the St. Lawrence River and Lake St. Peter, the trough containing the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain and the Hudson River, the “Kittatinny” Valley across northern New Jersey, the Allentown-Lebanon-Cumberland Valley stretching across Pennsylvania and Maryland to the Potomac, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the somewhat disconnected but physiographically related mountain valleys occupied by the headwaters of the Kanawha, New and Tennessee rivers, and lastly, the valley of the Coosa River, which sends its waters by way of the Alabama River to Mobile Bay.

     The Appalachian Valley is noted for its exceptional fertility. North of New Jersey glaciation has limited its productive powers, but south of New Jersey the soils of much of the valley are formed of distintegrated limestone. “There is, perhaps, no other area in the United States where as wide a range of field and garden crops will flourish with the same luxuriance as here.”* Lying at an elevation of 500 to 2,000 feet above the sea (except in the highest mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee), and having everywhere abundant rainfall and a most favourable climate, with summers that are not enervating and winters that are only moderately cold everywhere, except in northern New York and in Canada, this valley along the eastern edge of the Adirondack, Catskill, and Allegheny mountains early invited settlement. Indeed, within fifty

years after the founding of Philadelphia scores of towns had been started in the Lebanon-Cumberland valleys, and the occupation of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley had been begun by emigrants from tidewater Virginia, and by the Scotch-Irish who came south from Pennsylvania. During the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century the Appalachian Valley, and the many lesser valleys opening out from it, constituted the western frontier, towards which emigration was steadily directed.

     This fertile valley, lying relatively near the sea and readily accessible, was an influential factor in the economic progress of the colonies during the fifty years preceding the Revolution. While the expenses of transportation by the ways and vehicles then available prevented the valley from exporting much of its food products oversea, its agricultural surplus enabled the farming sections of the country nearer the seaports to ship more than they otherwise could of their grain and provisions to the West Indies and Europe. Moreover, when the long war with Great Britain cut off the maritime commerce of America for seven years and threw heavy financial burdens upon the people of the new commonwealth, they were strengthened economically by the wealth annually created in the Appalachian Valley, the agricultural West of that day.

     The Rivers as Highways of Inland Commerce.—The commercial highways of the colonies were the ocean and the rivers. Settlement—as was stated above—starting along the bays and at the head of tidewater navigation advanced inland along the streams and spread thence laterally over the country by way of the tributaries of the rivers. Most of the intercolonial intercourse was coastwise by the sea and on such long arms of the ocean as the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays; although the rivers—the Merrimac, Connecticut, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, and Savannah—were also used to a minor extent in intercolonial traffic.

     Practically the only avenues of inland commerce were the rivers, which until some time after the beginning of the national period remained unimproved. The rivers, however, were far more service able to commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than they are to-day; not only because traffic was then of small volume and was handled in small units, but from the fact that the rivers then drained well-forested catchment basins from which the runoff of water into the streams was less rapid in times of heavy rainfall, and was more evenly distributed through the year, than is the case at the present time, when the forest areas have been greatly restricted or totally destroyed by axe, fire, and plow.

     The crudely constructed boats brought the productions of the up-country settlements down the Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, and other rivers cheaply and without great difficulty, during most seasons of the year except in the winter, to supply the markets of the seaports, and load the vessels outbound for the West Indies or Europe. The movement of traffic up-stream was more expensive, but its volume was light as compared with shipments made with the current. As long as settlement was confined mainly to the river valleys, the transportation facilities afforded by the streams enabled the colonies to make steady, though moderate, progress. When the country east of the Allegheny Mountains came to be generally occupied—as it did toward the end of the eighteenth centuryturnpike roads were constructed to facilitate long-distance traffic and the agitation for river improvement and canal construction gathered headway.

     The Allegheny Passes and the Beginnings of Western Commerce.—Even before the Revolution the colonies south of New York began to push across the mountains and to plant outposts along the upper waters of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. The main gateways of the Alleghenies were reached by ascending the rivers. The broad plateau from which the Allegheny Mountains rise slopes to the southeast as far south as the valley of the New River, and consequently the Susquehanna, Potomac, and James rivers cut their way across the ranges and reach the piedmont through deep gaps. The southern half of the Appalachian highland slopes to the west and south, and the New, Holston and other rivers by which it is drained rise near the Blue Ridge, on the eastern margin of the plateau.

     The approach from Pennsylvania was up from the Susquehanna by way of its West Branch and the Juniata and its southern affluents, and thence across to the streams flowing into the Allegheny River. From Maryland and Virginia the route west was up the Potomac either to Cumberland and over the gap to the Youghiogheny River, or up to the mouth of the Shenandoah and by that stream to its head and on into the valley of the upper James, where a route might be taken westward up the James and across to the Greenbrier and thence to the Kanawha, or a trail might be taken to and up the New River to the divide leading to the headwaters of the Holston, which was sometimes followed to its union with the Tennessee, but more frequently was left just north of the boundary of North Carolina, where passes were crossed into the valleys of the Clinch and other streams, from which the trail led through the

Cumberland Gap to the headwaters of the Cumberland River. Another route west frequently taken by the tidewater Virginians was up the James and thence either by the Greenbrier River or by the Cumberland Gap. The people of Carolina had only to cross the Blue Ridge from the Yadkin and other streams to reach the New River or the streams flowing into the Holston.

     The natural approaches to the West from the Atlantic seaboard lay to the north and south of the Allegheny Mountains through New York and northern Georgia; but the Hudson-Mohawk route ran through the territory of the powerful Iroquois who co-operated with the French in retarding the westward progress of the English; while at the southern end of the mountains were the Creeks and Cherokees whom the Spaniards inspired to oppose the English. It was not until some time after the establishment of the National Government that these easier highways to the West could be safely taken.

     The advance of population across the Alleghenies by these routes was the first of the great westward movements by which the American continent has been occupied from ocean to ocean. The settlements made after the close of the French and Indian War in western Pennsylvania, and in what is now Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, could have no trade with the people on the Atlantic slope, because the mountains were an impassable barrier to transportation. The first commerce of the trans-Allegheny sections was carried on through New Orleans, with which they were connected by river ways. This river trade, however, did not antedate the Revolution. Regular commercial intercourse between the sections east and west of the Alleghenies began during the last decade of the eighteenth century; and it was not until the second and third decades of the nineteenth century that the transportation facilities were such as to permit much traffic to be carried across the Alleghenies.

     It may be stated, in generalization, that throughout the Colonial period, American commerce, with the exception of the fur trade, was restricted by geographic conditions to the domestic and over sea trade of the section lying between the Alleghenies and the ocean; that the shipment of goods from the western slopes of the Alleghenies to the mouth of the Mississippi began after the Revolution; and that the traffic east and west across the Alleghenies did not become of much importance before the beginning of the nineteenth century.

     General Results of Geographic Control.—This brief survey of

the geographic conditions obtaining on the Atlantic slope of America from Newfoundland to Florida suffices to show that the productions and the consequent trade of the three large sections—the New England, the Middle and the Southern Colonies—were subject to dissimilar geographic controls.

     By devoting themselves to fishing, shipbuilding, navigation, and to raising the cereals of the northern temperate latitudes, the settlers of New England tended to compete with the people of England. The consequences of this were that the British markets for the exports of New England were restricted both by the economic activities of the English people and—with the exception of the building and operation of ships—also by the navigation and trade laws enacted by England to protect and develop her industries. Their geographic environment predestined the New England colonists to trade, and being unable to exchange their commodities under favourable conditions in England for the British manufactures they required, the people of New England built up a large export trade to the West Indies and thereby secured the goods and coin with which to purchase English wares.

     The colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware which were rich in agricultural and forest resources, and had some mineral wealth, also found profit in engaging in the West Indian trade. These colonies could trade with the home country more easily than New England could; but their imports from England greatly exceeded their exportations to that country. Until after the close of the eighteenth century Great Britain’s imports from America were mainly of the commodities she did not produce at home, hence it was that the tobacco of Maryland and Virginia, and the naval stores, rice, and indigo of the Carolinas and Georgia constituted the larger share of the colonial exports to Great Britain.

     The effect of the geographic forces that caused England to import a comparatively small amount of the products of New England and the Middle Colonies and to buy large quantities of the natural exports of Maryland and the more southern colonies was enhanced by the corn laws and trade legislation enacted by England and Great Britain during the seventeenth century. A knowledge of American geography aids not only in understanding the development of American commerce during the Colonial period, but also reveals some of the reasons why England legislated as she did in regulating the industries and trade of her American colonies.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.