[Footnote 1: See map in paragraph 140.]
192. Emigration to the west, and the man who helped that
emigration.--But during the last hundred years that great empty land
of the far west has been filling up with people. Thousands upon
thousands of emigrants have gone there. They have built towns and
cities and railroads and telegraph lines. Thousands more are going
and will go. What has made such a wonderful change? Well, one man
helped to do a great deal toward it. His name was Robert Fulton. He
saw how difficult it was for people to get west; for if emigrants
wanted to go with their families in wagons, they had to chop roads
through the forest. That was slow, hard work. Fulton found a way that
was quick, easy, and cheap. Let us see who he was, and how he found
that way.
193. Robert Fulton's boyhood; the old scow; what Robert did for his
mother.--Robert Fulton was the son of a poor Irish farmer in
Pennsylvania.[2] He did not care much for books, but liked to draw
pictures with pencils which he hammered out of pieces of lead.
Like most boys, he was fond of fishing. He used to go out in an old
scow, or flat-bottomed boat, on a river near his home. He and another
boy would push the scow along with poles. But Robert said, There is
an easier way to make this boat go.
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