. From trail to railway through the Appalachians . veral years before the Revolution, when Richard HenryLee laid a plan for it before the Assembly of others thought of it too, as of the Erie canal,long before it was made. At the end of the War ofthe Revolution W^ashington made a long journey into thewild woods of New York. He went to the source of theSusquehanna at Otsego lake, visited the portage betweenthe Mohawk and Wood creek, and saw for himself thatNew York had a great chance for navigation and he had a natural love for his own Virginia, and he 98 THE BALTIMO
. From trail to railway through the Appalachians . veral years before the Revolution, when Richard HenryLee laid a plan for it before the Assembly of others thought of it too, as of the Erie canal,long before it was made. At the end of the War ofthe Revolution W^ashington made a long journey into thewild woods of New York. He went to the source of theSusquehanna at Otsego lake, visited the portage betweenthe Mohawk and Wood creek, and saw for himself thatNew York had a great chance for navigation and he had a natural love for his own Virginia, and he 98 THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO KAILKUAD 99 did not intend to let New York l;o ahead of his nativestate. His journeys across the mountains as a surveyorand as a soldier gave him a knowledge of the Ohiocountry, and as he had himself taken up much good landthere, he wished to have an easy way, by land or water,from the sea to the rich Ohio valley. So he thoughtmuch about a canal to run by the side of the Potomac,and he joined with others who felt as he chd to form the. Fui. 38. Mount Royal Station, Baltimork and Ohio Kail-road, Baltimore Potomac Company. They started a canal, but they foundso mucli in the way that the) were not able to go farwith it. The plan for a canal came up again twenty )ears afterWashington died, and in 1823 a charter was given forbuilding the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. New York hadthen been six years at work on the Erie canal and wouldfinish it in two years more. If the Virginia and Mary-land people had known that most of them would be dead lOO FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY before their canal was half done, and that it would neverbe really finished, they would not have undertaken it. They did not begin the work until five years later, in1828. Then a great crowd came together at George-town, now a part of Washington, on the Potomac, to seethe first earth thrown out. President John Quincy
Size: 2093px × 1194px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectatlanticstatesdescri
