But the orchard yield of stuff for the still, and the cotton field's furnishing the wherewithal to buy more slaves, brought temptations.

Distilleries and slaves, a contemporary said, were blessings or curses according as they were used or abused; for drunkenness and idleness were the gates of the road to retrogression.[7] [Footnote 7: David Ramsay _History of South Carolina_, II, pp.

246 ff.] The pathetic hardships which some of the poorer migrants underwent in their labors to reach the western opportunity are exemplified in a local item from an Augusta newspaper in 1819: "Passed through this place from Greenville District [South Carolina] bound for Chatahouchie, a man and his wife, his son and his wife, with a cart but no horse.

The man had a belt over his shoulders and he drew in the shafts; the son worked by traces tied to the end of the shafts and assisted his father to draw the cart; the son's wife rode in the cart, and the old woman was walking, carrying a rifle, and driving a cow."[8] This example, while extreme, was not unique.[9] [Footnote 8: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept.

24, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 196.] [Footnote 9: _Niles' Register_, XX, 320.] The call of the west was carried in promoters' publications,[10] in private letters, in newspaper reports, and by word of mouth.