that thorough understanding of the North American river system which
enabled him, many years afterward, to construct the Republic of the United
States upon the lines of least resistant intercommunication. And
Washington's conception of the problem and his solution thereof were, in
substance, this:

The American continent, west of the mountains and south of the Great
Lakes, is traversed in all directions by the Mississippi and its
tributaries, but we may confine our attention to two systems of
watercourses, the one to the west, forming by the Wisconsin and the main
arm of the Mississippi, a thoroughfare from Lake Michigan to the Gulf; and
the other by French Creek and the Allegheny, broken only by one easy
portage, affording a perfect means of access to the Ohio, a river which
has always operated as the line of cleavage between our northern and
southern States. The French starting from Quebec floated from Lake Erie
down the Allegheny to Pittsburgh, the English ascended the Potomac to
Cumberland, and thence, following the most practicable watercourses,
advanced on the French position at the junction of the Allegheny and the
Monongahela. There Washington met and fought them in 1754, and ever after
Washington maintained that the only method by which a stable union among
the colonies could be secured was by a main trunk system of transportation
along the line of the Ohio and the Potomac. This was to be his canal which
should bind north and south, east and west, together by a common interest,
and which should carry the produce of the west, north, and south, to the
Atlantic coast, where it should be discharged at the head of deep-water
navigation, and which should thus stimulate industry adjacent to the spot
he chose for the Federal City, or, in our language, for the City of
Washington. Thus the capital of the United States was to become the
capital of a true nation, not as a political compromise, but because it
lay at the central point of a community made cohesive by a social