He looms even a larger figure as he
rides through the fog of the Youghiogheny, for there he appears as the
prophet of the eastern and western waters. In his vision the New France
and the New England are to be indissolubly bound into a New America. He
had written Chevalier de Chastellux from Princeton, October 12, 1783,
after a return from the Mohawk Valley, that he could not but be struck by
the immense extent and importance "of the vast inland navigation of these
United States," that should bring that great western valley into
communication with the east, and that he would not rest contented until he
had explored that western country and traversed those lines which have
given bounds to a new empire. And as he comes back over the Alleghanies
from this journey of six hundred and eighty miles on the same horses he
writes: "No well-informed mind need be told how necessary it is to apply
the cement of interest to bind all parts together by one indissoluble
band." And the indissoluble band is the smooth road and the navigable
stream or canal.
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