Aristopia/Chapter 14
From the time Henry Morton returned from his first exploring expedition beyond the mountains the immigrants, already overflowing the five-mile radius around Mortonia, were directed up the Potomac to form new settlements; and when the governor returned from England the outmost settlement was more than forty miles above Mortonia. Now they were extended still more rapidly, for Morton acquired new vessels and extended his agencies in Europe.
The object was to push beyond the mountains, and small settlements were made along the Potomac a few miles apart, located at places where the best agricultural land was found. These settlements were made as compact as possible for safety from the savages, and each contained a strong block-house and stockade, with two or three small pieces of artillery. Each settlement consisting of twenty-five or thirty families constituted a township, with its local government of three supervisors, town clerk, justice of the peace, and constable. In each was located a store of the commonwealth. Each had its school and school officers. For teachers of these schools young women were brought from England, scions of "gentle" but impoverished families who preferred coming to America to the slavish life of a dependant or governess for some ill-tempered woman of rank or wealth.
Good roads were made to connect the settlements. The burden of making these roads was not laid upon the settlements, but the work was done by a body of laborers in the employ of the commonwealth, although really paid by the governor. Signals were arranged, to consist of three reports of a cannon, to give warning of an attack upon any settlement. At this signal the people were to retire to the forts and the attacked settlement was to receive all possible succor from its neighbors. No hostilities with the Indians had yet occurred, but the settlers were warned not to put any trust in the savages which might some time prove fatal. At the same time, the Indians were treated with justice and friendliness. Such land as the settlers of Aristopia needed was bought of the Indians at prices satisfactory to the latter.
It was not long before the chain of settlements extended from Mortonia bey ond the high plateau forming the watershed between the Potomac and the streams which flow northward into the Ohio, and descended to those streams. It was now decided to prepare to remove the capital of Aristopia from Mortonia to a point beyond the mountains. A new city (named Morgania in honor of a prominent official of the colony) was laid out on the middle one of the three large streams between the head of the Potomac and the Ohio. At this site was a fine waterfall with an ample volume of water to turn many mill-wheels. The valley was broad and fertile enough to support a large agricultural population. The ranges of mountains, or hills, which bounded the valley were full of iron ore and coal, although the value of the latter was little known at that time. But there was timber enough to make charcoal to smelt iron for a nation.
Soon after the site of this future capital was laid out and its settlement begun, a chain of trading-posts from the Ohio to the great river was established. The first one, called Onondio, was situated on the southeastern hank of the Ohio, at the mouth of a large creek in latitude 39° 40′. The second was on the same side of the Ohio, at the mouth of a river afterward called the Little Kanawha. The third was at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River. The fourth was on the north bank of the Ohio at the mouth of a river called the Scioto. The fifth was at a very beautiful location on the north bank of the Ohio, about a hundred miles below the mouth of the Scioto, and opposite the mouth of a considerable river coming in on the south side of the Ohio. The sixth was about a hundred and twenty miles farther down the river than the fifth. At this point were rapids in the river, which considerably impeded navigation. The seventh was near the mouth of the Wabash River. As the ground at the mouth of the Ohio was unfit for settlement and the point was considerably without the chartered limits of Aristopia, no post was established there. The eighth post was established on the eastern bank of the Misashapi (Mississippi) about one hundred and fifty miles (by the river) above the mouth of the Ohio and near the mouth of a considerable river. This post was named from the river, Kaskaskia. Another post, established a hundred miles farther up the great river, on the western bank, on a high and commanding place, was called Carondolet. Some twenty miles above the last post, the explorers found another mighty river pouring a turbid flood into the Misashapi on the western side. These posts were situated near the mouths of rivers navigable for long distances by Indian canoes. Facilities were thus given to the Indians for bringing in from an immense region their furs and peltries to trade. Thus the fur trade of Aristopia soon came to exceed that of Canada. Although the furs were not quite so good as those of more northern latitudes, the skins intended for leather, as those of the deer and elk, were of the best, while in the matter of buffalo skins Aristopia had almost a monopoly.
As a means of communication between these posts horse-boats were built, three or four of which plied between Onondio on the upper Ohio, and the post at the mouth of the Wabash. From this post to Kaskaskia the communication was overland, and the distance about a hundred miles, mostly over a prairie region. One horse-boat plied between Kaskaskia and Carondolet on the great river. As the people at the posts raised their own corn and vegetables, there was no great bulk of goods to be brought to them, and as they had only furs and peltries to ship away, there was no great weight to export, so that frequent trips were not necessary.
Though the colonists of Aristopia were not allowed to furnish the Indians firearms or other deadly weapons, they rendered them great assistance in getting furs and peltries by furnishing them steel traps.
When civilized people are brought into close contact with barbarism, as were the first European settlers of America, there is a great temptation with many of them to plunge into that barbarism and themselves become semi-barbaric. This was notably the case with a large portion of the settlers of Virginia. They did not congregate in communities and build towns, but scattered out on separate plantations. Very many of the younger sons of English "gentle" families, and many disbanded soldiers, unused to manual labor, but attracted by the free life of the new world, settled on the frontiers of the colony, and, raising only an acre or two of corn, depended for the rest of their subsistence on hunting and fishing, and procuring the few necessaries of civilized commerce with peltries, the spoils of their guns and traps. With the advance of settlement these men and their descendants, frontier life having become a passion with them, pushed on to new frontiers. Though such a life produced a race of men with some prominent virtues, among them great courage and self-reliance, yet it tended to a mode of living not much above barbarism. Such a life appeared to Ralph Morton very undesirable, and he labored to keep his people out of it and in a state of civilization even superior to that of Europe. Therefore he labored to keep the settlements compact and prevent straggling in the march of empire. The few in whom the desire to plunge into barbarism seemed irrepressible were selected to man the distant trading-posts. Most of these men took Indian wives; and their children, although having some undesirable characteristics, formed a medium between the two races by no means without its value to the colony.
With a view to facilitate as much as possible communication and commerce between the transmontane country and the sea, the governor bravely undertook the work of constructing a navigable canal from Mortonia to a point near the head of the Potomac, paying most of the expense from his private means. In about two years the canal was constructed to a point above the "Great Falls." Although this advanced navigation little more than ten miles, it was very beneficial by bringing down to Mortonia a great flow of water with all the fall needed to run many mills, as at the upper edge of Mortonia the canal was more than thirty feet above the surface of the river. From this point it was conducted down to tide level by a series of locks. This section of the canal first completed offered much greater difficulties that any section of equal length subsequently constructed, as twenty locks were needed in ten miles. The mills at Mortonia contained not only great saws for cutting planks from logs, but smaller saws and lathes for cutting timber into all shapes for all sorts of manufactures. Thus, by the aid of water-power handles were made for all sorts of tools, hubs and other parts of wagons, furniture, etc. Furniture could be shipped to England and Holland and sold at a good profit, the separate pieces, packed closely, to be put together, polished, and painted or varnished by workmen in Europe. The abundance of good cabinet woods in America made this traffic large and profitable. And not only did the mills of Mortonia work wood, but iron also, by means of lathes, great hammers, and ponderous steel rollers for rolling iron into bars and sheets, all driven by water-power. All such work was then done in Europe by unaided human muscle.