The broad and national features of the proposed trans-Alleghany water-way have so strongly commended themselves to President Grant that in his last message he recommends preliminary Congressional action, and in a more recent address to a number of distinguished visitors at the Executive Mansion he used much stronger and bolder language in assuring them that "he hoped Congress would give such encouragement to the measure as to secure the completion of the canal." He has in these words only repeated the sentiments of his illustrious predecessors, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, in behalf of the value of the work. We have already alluded to Mr. Jefferson's early advocacy of a water-line by the James and Kanawha Rivers. The first idea of this enterprise seems to have been suggested to Washington as early as the year 1753, after his celebrated trip from Jamestown to Fort Duquesne as an envoy of Governor Dinwiddie. At the close of the Revolutionary war he made an arduous and personal exploration of the country for many hundred miles. He kept a journal in which were minutely recorded his conversations with all intelligent persons he met respecting the facilities for internal navigation afforded by the rivers rising in the Alleghany Mountains and flowing either east or west. Returning to Mount Vernon October 4, 1784, he wrote, as the result of his observations, to the then governor of Virginia, the father of William Henry Harrison: "I shall take the liberty now, my dear sir, to suggest a matter which would (if I am not too short-sighted a politician) mark your administration as an important era in the annals of this country. It has been my decided opinion that the _shortest_, _easiest_ and _least expensive_ communication with the invaluable and extensive country back of us would be by one or both of the rivers of this State which have their sources in the Appalachian Mountains." General Washington, on the 26th of August, 1785, became the first president of the company authorized by the legislation which he had suggested previously to Governor Harrison. It is well known that the same views entertained by Washington and Jefferson were held and advocated by Mr. Madison, long before the most prescient statesman could descry the faintest image of that colossal empire of population, wealth and rapid development now lying west of the Alleghanies.