Excerpt from History of the James River and Kanawha Company The James River and Kanawha Company was Virginia's bid for the western trade, and the works that it constructed, of which the canal was only a part, formed the chief com mercial artery of the state in ante bellum times. As such it is entitled to have its story told, and the purpose is to tell it not so much from the point of view of an agency of transportation as from that of a great ideal conceived by Washington, fostered by Marshall, and partially carried out by Cabell and his successors. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.