INTRODUCTION. 81 



who has dealt his favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may 

 have wisdom to improve them !"* 



Ideas like these soon afterwards engaged the attention of philosophic minds 

 throughout the states, and it was perceived that in thus improving the inland 

 navigation of the continent, the route for a communication between the inland 

 waters and the sea, which should secure to itself the trade of the valley between 

 the Allegany mountains and the Mississippi, would become an object of zealous 

 competition. 



The ocean, receiving homage through the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio, 

 the Potomac, the Susquehannah, the Delaware, the Hudson and the St. Law- 

 rence, seemed to invite through those various channels the accomplishment of the 

 stupendous project. 



By removing obstructions to the navigable flow of the continuous waters of 

 the great lakes and of the St. Lawrence, ship navigation might be grasped six 

 hundred miles up that river, and extended around the Falls of Niagara into the 

 waters of Lake Erie. 



Citizens of Pennsylvania proposed to accomplish the same great purpose, by 

 alternative land and water communications, surmounting the Alleganies, and em- 

 ploying in the transit between the Delaware and the lakes the waters of the 

 Susquehannah and the Allegany. 



The project of Maryland comprehended a diversion of trade from the Penn- 

 sylvania route at Pittsburgh, and a passage to tide water through the Potomac. 



The comprehensive sagacity of Washington, as early as 1784, marked out a 

 plan for securing to Virginia the trade of the regions in the vicinity of the lakes, 

 by connecting the navigable waters of James river by portages, or other commu- 

 nications, with those of the Kenhawa, the Muskingum, and the rivers flowing 



into lake Erie.f 



The Mississippi offered an easy descending navigation almost from the shores 

 of the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. But the keys of the St. Lawrence and the 



* Washington's letter to the Marquis of Chastellux. t Washington's letter to Governor Harrison. 



Intr. 11 



