Ohio Valley Hist. Ass'n, Fifth Annual
Meeting. 7
sylvania State College, excellently
fulfilled its purpose of form-
ing a general introduction to the
sessions of the three-days meet-
ing.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE OHIO RIVER IN
WESTERN
EXPANSION.
BY EDWIN
ERLE SPARKS,
President Pennsylvania State College.
Of the five great continents on the
globe, three have been con-
quered, have been opened and have been
civilized within the span of
recorded history. It is possible,
therefore, to make a comprehensive
study of the point of attack and the
progress of the march across the
continents of North and South America
and of Africa. Points of re-
sistance and points of difference are
found in making such comparison.
Naturally the point of attack is from
the coast, and the line of march
is inland. But here the similarity
ceases; natural and local charac-
teristics begin to show their force in
variations. The general line of
progress in Africa has been from the
North to the South, and a counter
movement from the South to the North,
with a side line from the
west. The main direction in South
America has been from the South-
east to the Northwest, and from the East
to the West, with a slight
progress from the North toward the
South; but in either of these
continents has there been a general,
marked and definite line of ad-
vance.
North America, on the contrary, has ever
maintained one line
of advance, one direction of
progress-from the East to the West.
"Hold Westward, Pilot" cried
the persistent Columbus, and in that con-
fident command he gave the watchword for
four hundred years of
North American advance. "Westward
the course of empire takes its
way" said the equally persistent
Bishop Berkeley in his missionary
vision of christianizing the heathen in
the new world. "Westward lies
the domain of England" said the
ambitious Governor Spottswood, of
Virginia, in attempting to establish the
claim of his king to the Trans-
Alleghenian lands. "Go West, young
man," said Horace Greeley, the
sage of the New York Tribune, in
attempting to find a remedy for
crowded conditions and social unrest in
the settled Eastern States.
"Our manifest destiny is from the
Atlantic to the Pacific" said William
Henry Seward, in calling up the vision
of the Western expansion, which
gave to our domain, eventually, both
Oregon and Alaska.
Omitting as insignificant the detached
settlements of the Spanish
and Russians on the Pacific Coast, the
conquest of the North American