The Potomac Company fared no better than the other early companies which attempted to improve the lesser waterways of America before the method of slackwater navigation was discovered. It made, however, the pioneer effort in a cause which meant more to its age than we can readily imagine to-day, and in time it built the great and successful Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, as the early attempts to render the Mohawk River navigable were the first chapters in the history of the famed Erie Canal. These efforts of Washington's constitute likewise the first chapter of the building of our one great national road. This highway, begun in 1811, and completed to the Ohio River in 1818, was practically the portage path which was so important a link in Washington's comprehensive plan. Its starting point was Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac, and it led to Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela, and Wheeling on the Ohio. All of these points were famous ports in the days when that first burst of immigration swept over the Alleghanies. Washington's plan for a bond of union between East and West was also the first chapter of the story of throwing the first railway across the Alleghanies. "I consider this among the most important acts of my life," said Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, when with the stroke of a pen he laid the first foundation for the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, "second only to my signing the Declaration of Independence, if even it be second to that." Washington's dream of an empire of united States bound together by a "chain of federal union" was enlarged and modified by the changing needs of a nation, but in its vital essence it was never altered. "It would seem," wrote the late Herbert B. Adams, "as though, in one way or another, all lines of our public policy lead back to Washington, as all roads lead to Rome." And yet, after all, I believe there are other words which sound a note that should never die in the ears of his people, and those are his own youthful words, "A pusillanimous behavior now will ill suit the times."