navigation of these United States [the letter runs] and could not
but be struck by the immense extent and importance of it, and of
the goodness of that Providence which has dealt its favors to us
with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to
improve them. I shall not rest contented till I have explored the
Western country, and traversed those lines, or great part of
them, which have given bounds to a new empire."

"The vast inland navigation of these United States!" It is an
interesting fact that Washington should have had his first
glimpse of this vision from the strategic valley of the Mohawk,
which was soon to rival his beloved Potomac as an improved
commercial route from the seaboard to the West, and which was
finally to achieve an unrivaled superiority in the days of the
Erie Canal and the Twentieth Century Limited.

We may understand something of what the lure of the West meant to
Washington when we learn that in order to carry out his proposed
journey after the Revolution, he was compelled to refuse urgent
invitations to visit Europe and be the guest of France. "I found
it indispensably necessary," he writes, "to visit my Landed
property West of the Apalacheon Mountains.... One object of
my journey being to obtain information of the nearest and best
communication between Eastern & Western waters; & to facilitate
as much as in me lay the Inland Navigation of the Potomack."

On September 1, 1784, Washington set out from Mount Vernon on his
journey to the West. Even the least romantic mind must feel a
thrill in picturing this solitary horseman, the victor of
Yorktown, threading the trails of the Potomac, passing on by