, and tread the paths of private life, with
heartful satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined to be
pleased with all; and this, my dear friend, being the order of my
march, I will move gently down the stream of life, until I sleep
with my fathers.[1]

[Footnote 1: Hapgood, 287.]

In September, 1784, he made a journey on horseback, with a pack-train
to carry his tents and food, into the Northwestern country, which had
especially interested him since the early days when Fort Duquesne was
the goal of his wandering. He observed very closely and his mind was
filled with large imaginings of what the future would see in the
development of the Northwest. Since his youth he had never lost
the conviction that an empire would spring up there; only make the
waterways easy and safe and he felt sure that a very large commerce
would result and with it the extension of civilization. In a memorial
to the legislature he urged that Virginia was the best placed
geographically of all the States to undertake the work of establishing
connection with the States of the Northwest, and he suggested various
details which, when acted upon later, proved to be, as Sparks
remarked, "the first suggestion of the great system of internal
improvements which has since been pursued in the United States."

On returning to Mount Vernon, he entertained Lafayette for the last
time before he sailed for France. After he had gone, Washington wrote
him this letter in which appears the affection of a friend and the
reverie of an old man looking somewhat wistfully towards sunset, "and
after that the dark":

In the moment of our separation, upon the road as I travelled,
and every hour since, I have felt all that love, respect, and
attachment for you, with which length of years, close connection,
and your merits have inspired me. I often asked myself as our
carriages separated, whether that was the last sight I ever should
have of you? And, though I wished to say No, my fears answered
Yes. I called to mind the days of my youth, and found they had
long since fled to return no more; that I was now descending the
hill I had been fifty-two years climbing, and that, though I was
blest with a good constitution, I was of a short-lived family and
might soon expect to be entombed in the mansion of my fathers.
These thoughts darkened the shades, and gave a gloom to the
picture, and consequently to my