Bishop Berkeley, prophetic soul, wrote his line: "Westward the course of empire takes its way." The public has always edited it to read the "star" of empire that "takes it way" to the West. If one will read this poem in connection with a government census map, he can not fail to see how excellent is the amendment. Excellent census map, that holds between its covers the greatest poem, the greatest drama ever written! Excellent census map, that marks the center of population of America with a literal star, and, at the curtain of each act, the lapse of each ten years, advances this star with the progress of the drama, westward, westward, ever westward! Excellent scenario, its scheme done in red and yellow and brown, patched each ten years, ragged, blurred, until, after a hundred years, the scheme is finished, and the color is solid all across the page, showing that the end has come, and that the land has yielded to the law!
The first step of this star of empire, that concluded in 1800, barely removed it from its initial point on the Chesapeake. The direction was toward the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. The government at Washington, young as it was, knew that the Ohio River, reached from the North by a dozen trails from the Great Lakes, and running out into that West which even then was coveted by three nations, was of itself a priceless possession. The restless tide of humanity spread from that point according to principles as old as the world. Having a world before them from which to choose their homes, the men of that time sought out those homes along the easiest lines.
The first thrust of the out-bound population was not along the parallels of latitude westward, as is supposed to be the rule, but to the south and southeast, into the valleys of the Appalachians, where the hills would raise corn, and the streams would carry it. The early emigrants learned that a raft would eat nothing, that a boat runs well down-stream. Men still clung to the seaboard region, though even then they exemplified the great law of population that designates the river valleys to be the earliest and most permanent centers of population. The first trails of the Appalachians were the waterways.