There is something splendid suggested by these words. Though he knew, perhaps better than any man, the pitiful condition of the country, there is here no note of despair, but rather a cry of enthusiasm. The leader of the armies was now to become a leader of a people, and at the outset his eye is uplifted and his faith great. With prophetic genius his face, at the close of his exhausting struggle, is turned toward the West. It is certain that Washington could not have known what a tremendous influence the new West was to have in the perplexing after hours of that critical period of our history. Perhaps he judged better what it would be partly for the reason that its very existence had furnished a moral support to him in times of darkness and despair; he always remembered those valleys and open meadows where the battles of his boyhood had been fought, and the tradition that he would have led the Continental army thither in case of final defeat may not be unfounded. Whether he knew aught of the wholesome part the West was to play in our national development or not, two things are very clear to-day: the West, and the opportunity to occupy it, were the "main chance" of the spent colonies at the end of that war; and if Washington had known all that we know at this day, he certainly could not have done much more than he did to bring about the welding and cementing of the East and the West, which now meant to each other more than ever before. He again utters practically the old cry of his youth: "A pusillanimous behavior now will ill suit the times." And the emphasis is on the "now." It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Washington, soon after reaching Mount Vernon, at the close of the war, determined on another western journey. The ostensible reason for the trip was to look after his lands, but from the journal of the traveller it is easy to see that the important result of the trip was a personal inspection of the means of communication between the various branches of the Ohio and the Potomac, which so nearly interlock in southwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern West Virginia. It must be remembered that in that day river navigation was considered the most practical form of transportation. All the rivers of Virginia, great and small, were the highways of the tobacco industry; the rivers of any colony were placed high in an inventory of the colony's wealth, not only because they implied fertility, but because they were the great avenues of trade. The first important sign of commercial awakening in the interior of the colonies was the improvement of the navigable rivers and the highways.