drawn to it from the old States by the great advantages which it afforded to those who desired to increase their riches. The rapid accumulation of wealth whetted the appetite for getting money, until the people could not be satisfied with any quantity acquired. It was a subject of wondering cogitation to me, who had for many years been constantly taken up with the affairs of the government, and the strife of party politics, to listen to my Montgomery friends talking without ceasing of cotton, negroes, land and money."
The hardest problem that the business man
of those early times had to face was the question
of transportation. Dry goods, groceries
and manufactured articles had at first been
brought from Savannah and Charleston by
wagon or horseback. But the way was long,
the roads wretched,—especially through the
Creek territory,—and the Indians demanded
exorbitant tolls at the bridges; so the method
was anything but satisfactory, and other plans
were soon tried. Barges and flatboats were
laboriously poled up from Mobile. They bore
the promising names, Alabama Swan, Lady of
the Lake, Cotton Patch and Ready Money, but
consumed from fifty to seventy days on the
trip. The local paper records the arrival of an
"amphibious animal in the shape of a boat from
East Tennessee." It came down the Tennes-
