Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/32

 plans materialized in the Potomac Navigation Company, and his highway, that should be a strong link in the chain of Federal Union between the improved Potomac and the Ohio, became the Cumberland Road; and it ran just where he did not care to see it—through Maryland and Pennsylvania. Yet it accomplished his first high purpose of welding the Union together, and was a fruit of that patriotic letter to Governor Harrison written a few days after Washington pushed his way through the wet paths of the Cheat and Youghiogheny Valleys in 1784.

These first routes across the mountains south of the Cumberland Road—in Virginia—were, as noted, largely those of wild beasts. "It has been observed before," wrote Washington in recapitulation, "to what fortuitous circumstances the paths of this Country owe their being, & how much the ways may be better chosen by a proper investigation of it; " In many instances the new roads built hereabouts in later days were shorter than the earlier courses; however it remains true here, as elsewhere, that the strategic geog-