Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 10).djvu/110

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110
THE CUMBERLAND ROAD

business done on various portions of the Cumberland Road, with the figures he himself quotes. He says: "It is estimated that two-fifths of the trade and travel of the road were diverted at Brownsville, and fell into the channel furnished at that point by the slackwater navigation of the Monongahela River, and a similar proportion descended the Ohio from Wheeling, and the remaining fifth continued on the road to Columbus, Ohio, and points further west. The travel west of Wheeling was chiefly local, and the road presented scarcely a tithe of the thrift, push, whirl and excitement which characterized it east of that point."[1] On another page Mr. Searight gives the account of the old-time superintendents of the road in Pennsylvania in its most prosperous era, one dating from November 10, 1840 to November 10, 1841,[2] the other from May 1, 1843 to December 31, 1844.[3] In the first of these periods the amount of tolls received from the eastern division of the road (east of the Monongahela) is two thousand dollars less than the

  1. Searight's The Old Pike, p. 298.
  2. Id., pp. 362–366.
  3. Id., pp. 367–370.