The historical significance of the Hudson might be illustrated in some such way at many another point upon its banks. The location of Albany is particularly to be noted as one evidently intended by nature for an important rendezvous. In the earlier period Albany and the Saratoga district, and certain points of advantage in the Mohawk Valley, were of great strategic importance. They were natural gateways, which had to be held first against the Indians and Frenchmen, and afterward against the British. Their later importance has had to do with canals, railroads and the development of commerce. But of Albany it must be said that it has also the distinction of being one of the three or four chief law-making centres of the English-speaking world. In no other way has the State of New York exerted so wide an influence upon the country at large as in the working out of laws and institutions which have been re-enacted almost without change by a great number of the other States of the Union. Thus Albany has been a great training school in politics and legislation. Before the days of railroad building, the Erie Canal was the greatest undertaking that this country had witnessed in the improvement of its transportation facilities. This waterway connected the Great Lakes with the Atlantic by way of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys; and among other results of a far-reaching nature there followed the development of the city of Buffalo, a commercial and manufacturing community founded in the opening years of the nineteenth century, and destined in the twentieth to achieve such growth and splendor as few men are yet bold enough to anticipate. We have seen in our generation fierce rivalry for the occupation of Khartoum, at the head of Nile navigation, with one expedition succeeding another until the final success of the English under General Kitchener. The possession of Khartoum was known to carry with it the control of the fertile Soudan beyond, as well as to affect the permanent mastery of the valley of the lower Nile to the Delta. In some such manner the French and English in the middle of the eighteenth century appreciated the strategic importance of the point at the junction of the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers, where the Ohio took its start, and from which navigation was unobstructed all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It was in large part the struggle for the site of Pittsburgh that gave Washington the military training and the large perception of the future of America that fitted him for his great tasks of leadership. The development of Pittsburgh and the opening of the Ohio furnish most instructive and interesting chapters in the history of our country.