Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/411

364 who was a student of the favored localities and resources of the country, and especially of his own State, declared that Norfolk was destined to be "the great emporium of the Chesapeake." Madison agreed with Jefferson, holding it to be "the true interest of Virginia to foster the prosperity of Norfolk, as among the prime objects of her policy." But Virginia acted like a stepmother, stolidly spending twenty million dollars to improve Richmond, to one hundred and ninety thousand dollars to develop Norfolk.

In later days, Maury said: "Norfolk is in a position to have commanded the business of the Atlantic seaboard. It is midway on the coast; it has a back country of great fertility and resources; and as to the approaches from the ocean, there is no harbor, from St. John to the Rio Grande, which has the same facility of ingress and egress at all times and in all weathers. * * * Virginia saw those advantages, and slept on them."

But she is waking; or at least Norfolk is waking to her own interests; and with men of extraordinary intelligence and energy, like Gen. Groner and Mr. Cook, above mentioned, who are each building up enormous commercial enterprises, it is probable that even in our own time, we shall see