k, let your aim be certain, and he dies. Our
rifles were levelled, rifles which, but for him, knew not how to
miss. It was all in vain, for a power mightier far than we,
shielded him from harm. He can not die in battle. I am old, and
soon shall be gathered to the great council-fire of my fathers, in
the land of shades; but ere I go, there is a something, bids me
speak, in the voice of prophecy. Listen! _The Great Spirit protects
that man, and guides his destinies--he will become the chief of
nations, and a people yet unborn, will hail him as the founder of a
mighty empire!_"

This prophetic speech made a deep impression upon the companions of
Washington; and always afterward, on the field of battle, Doctor Craik
remembered it, and was fully persuaded that his friend would come out of
the storm of conflict unharmed. And so he did. It is a singular fact,
that Washington never received the slightest wound in battle.

Washington took an active interest in all that concerned the development
of the internal resources of the country; and one of the objects of his
tour westward in 1784, was the observation of the courses, and the
character of the streams flowing into the Ohio; the distance of their
navigable parts to those of the rivers east of the mountains, and the
distance of the portage between them. He had conceived the idea that a
communication, by canals, might be formed between the Potomac and James
rivers, and the waters of the Ohio, and thence to the great chain of
northern lakes. This idea had assumed the tangible shape of a
well-matured scheme of internal improvement, and he had attempted to
form a company for the purpose, when the kindling of the War for
Independence put a stop to every enterprise of that kind.

Washington now desired to awaken new interest in the matter, and in a
long and able letter to Benjamin Harrison, then governor of Virginia,
written in October, 1784, he set forth the advantages to be expected by
such a system of inland navigation. This letter was "one of the ablest,
most sagacious, and most important productions of his pen," says Mr.
Sparks, "presenting first a clear statement of the question, and showing
the practicability of facilitating the intercourse of trade between the
East and the West, by improving and extending the water
communications."[7]

Washington then proceeded, by a train of admirable arguments and
illustrations, to explain t