navigation then known.


There were mooted many other schemes. General Rufus Putnam, for
example, advocated the Pickering or "Army" plan of occupying the
West; he wanted a fortified line to the Great Lakes, in case of
war with England, and fortifications on the Ohio and the
Mississippi, in case Spain should interrupt the national commerce
on these waterways. And Thomas Jefferson theorized in his study
over the toy states of Metropotamia and Polypotamia--brought his

...trees and houses out
And planted cities all about.

But it remained for George Washington, the Virginia planter, to
catch, in something of its actual grandeur, the vision of a
Republic stretching towards the setting sun, bound and unified by
paths of inland commerce. It was Washington who traversed the
long ranges of the Alleghanies, slept in the snows of Deer Park
with no covering but his greatcoat, inquired eagerly of trapper
and trader and herder concerning the courses of the Cheat, the
Monongahela, and the Little Kanawha, and who drew from these
personal explorations a clear and accurate picture of the future
trade routes by which the country could be economically,
socially, and nationally united.

Washington's experience had peculiarly fitted him to catch this
vision. Fortune had turned him westward as he left his mother's
knee. First as a surveyor for Lord Fairfax in the Shenandoah
Valley and later, under Braddock and Forbes, in the armies