Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 9).djvu/112

106 with the aid of sails, were transported the armament and stores which made possible the forts that at once came into existence in the valley—Forts McIntosh, Henry, Harmar, Finney, Washington, and others. These boats were huge boxes, covered and uncovered, square at each end, and flat-bottomed. A batteau, in distinction from a barge, was widest in the middle and tapered to a point at each end, of about fifteen hundred-weight burden and could be managed by two men with oars and setting-poles.

The batteau form was more or less adopted by later barges; but the ordinary early barge was much the shape of the present-day coal barge. The "canal boat" form, or batteau, was a later development.

American expansion westward, as elsewhere suggested, was favored more by the Ohio River than by any and all others: it ran the right way. Throughout the earlier decades of the pioneer era the greater portion of traffic was down stream. Even in the later days of steamboating the downstream traffic was ever heaviest. In 1835 the total tonnage received and entered at