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26 portion of his country received so much of his attention and study as this. Washington was the original expansionist—not for expansion's sake, truly, but for country's sake and duty's. If Washington was the father of his country, he was in a stronger and more genuine sense the father of the West. It was begotten of him. Others might have led the Revolutionary armies through the valleys as deep and dark as those through which Washington passed, and have eventually fought England to a similar standstill as did Washington; at least Gates, Greene, and Putnam would never have surrendered up the cause of the colonies. But of the West, who knew it as Washington did? Who saw its possibilities, realized the advantages which would accrue to the colonies from its possession, understood the part it might play in the commercial development of the seaboard states? Who else had traversed Nemacolin's little path before 1753?

If ever a finger was lifted by order of Providence it was the finger which fired the first gun of the French and Indian war in that Alleghany vale. And yet today