Johnny Appleseed; The Romance of the Sower (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... fresh fields dozen years after the close of the war Johnny's new orchards blossomed and fruited in little towns and on well-cleared farms all the way out to the headwaters of the Miami, but Johnny was not there to see them. For the thousands of people who had come to live in the Ohio River Valley the year eighteen hundred and twenty-five was marked by the completion of the Cumberland Road to Wheeling, Virginia, and by the journey to the new West of the Marquis de Lafayette. It was a triumph of pioneer energy and faith that the nation's aged guest was able to travel by post from the Potomac, and then by a palatial steamboat to St. Louis. Banquets and balls were given him in river ports of astonishing size and resources, and far up in Indiana, at the head of navigation on the Wabash, a venturesome settlement was made in that year and named in his honor. It was thus that the floods of population and trade had fallen down the Ohio and backed up the larger tributaries. But behind and above these navigable streams the country of Johnny's beautiful labors was still heavily wooded and thinly settled, and must remain so until canals and railroads ended their isolation. Even there, however, people were living in comfort and security. What Indians were left were confined to reservations; wild animals were disappearing, and little flocks fed on a thousand hills. Few children were more than five miles from a log school-house, and few families farther than a half-day's journey from a mill town near which Johnny had a nourishing nursery. In the matter of orchards this region, too, could now grow its own supply while the sower was off to fields unsown. To the people of America a new door of dreams had been set ajar. With the booming of successive cannon...