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. 
Intr. 11 
t Washington’s letter to Governor Harrison. 
