At an early date Pownall comprehended the position of our country, geographically. He saw the wonderful means of internal communication supplied by its inland waters, and also the opportunities of external commerce afforded by the Atlantic Ocean. On the former he dwells, in a Memorial drawn up in 1756 for the Duke of Cumberland.[522] Nobody in our own day, after the experience of more than a century, has portrayed more vividly the two vast aqueous masses,--one composed of the Great Lakes and their dependencies, and the other of the Mississippi and its tributaries. The Great Lakes are described as “a wilderness of waters, spreading over the country by an infinite number and variety of branchings, bays, straits, &c.”[523] The Mississippi, with its eastern branch, called the Ohio, is described as having, “as far as we know, but two falls,--one at a place called by the French St. Antoine, high up on the west or main branch”; and all its waters “run to the ocean with a still, easy, and gentle current.”[524] The picture is completed by exhibiting the two masses in combination:-- “The waters of each respective mass--not only the lesser streams, but the main general body of each going through this continent in every course and direction--have, by their approach to each other, by their interlacing with each other, by their communication to every quarter and in every direction, an alliance and unity, and form one mass, a one whole.”[525] And he remarks, that it is thus seen “how the watery element claims and holds dominion over this extent of land: that the great lakes which lie upon its bosom on one hand, and the great river Mississippi and the multitude of waters which run into it, form there a communication,--an alliance or dominion of the watery element, that commands throughout the whole; that these great lakes appear to be _the throne_, the _centre of a dominion_, whose influence, by an infinite number of rivers, creeks, and streams, extends itself through all and every part of the continent, supported by the communication of, and alliance with, the waters of Mississippi.”[526]