From 1822 to 1826 the young lieutenant was engaged in tracing and defining the boundary in the terrible wilderness that stretches from Lake Superior west to the Lake of the Woods, enduring cold, hunger and incredible hardships, and laying the seeds of disease that was to cut him off in the prime of manhood and the zenith of his success. When he came back to civilization from these arduous duties, he found the country agog with railroad excitement, caused by the work of the Stephensons in England. American capitalists were eager to build railroads, but they realized that the radically different conditions of the two countries necessitated essentially different systems of construction and operation. Needing the best engineering skill in the country, they applied to the government, and Whistler was, with others, detailed to survey the routes, report on systems and supervise construction of the roads. He was engaged in this responsible work for years, but, knowing that such talents as his—and he was recognized as one of the ablest engineers in the country—found but slender rewards in the service of the republic, and were better appreciated in civil life, he resigned his commission in December, 1833. His services were secured at once by the railroads, and he was sent with Jonathan Knight, William Gibbs McNeill and Ross Winans to England to examine the system there, and returning he occupied himself with the affairs of the Baltimore & Ohio and Boston & Albany railroads. It is not too much to say that, practically, George Washington Whistler laid down the lines upon which the American railroad system was built, and along which it has grown to be the most splendid and advanced in the world, the most potent agency in the progress and civilization of the republic. In 1834 Whistler became the engineer of the proprietors of the Locks and Canals of Lowell, Mass., the corporation whose wisdom and shrewdness have been instrumental in changing the fields and pastures along the slopes of the Merrimack into the foremost and most prosperous manufacturing city devoted to textile industries on this continent. Besides looking keenly after their strictly local interests, he spent months in the corporation’s machine shops, drawing plans, evolving inventions and improvements and supervising the construction and remodeling of a Stephenson locomotive, in order to adapt it to the needs and peculiar requirements of American railroads. Those most familiar with railroads and their history in this country are best equipped to appreciate the work done in that little machine shop by Whistler and to understand its value.