Note 30 — {41} LETTER IV[29]

Flint’s route to Pittsburg was by way of the new Lancaster pike—the first macadamized American road—and onward over the central Pennsylvania route through Bedford, Ligonier, and Greensburg. Much ado was made over the opening of the Cumberland Road across the Alleghenies; but until the building of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway to Cumberland, Maryland, in 1845, the central Pennsylvania route seems to have been the popular one from Washington and Philadelphia to Pittsburg. John Melish’s map in Morris Birkbeck, Letters from Illinois (Philadelphia, 1818), does not give the Cumberland Road, although it outlines the old Northwestern turnpike from Cumberland to Parkersburg, West Virginia. Almost all English travelers passed westward over the Pennsylvania Road, which was two hundred and ninety-four miles in length, according to Melish, Traveller’s Directory, p. 69.—Ed.