...e avenues of a large internal commerce. Virginia early embarked in the improvement of many of her fluvial waterways by canals and slack-water navigation, especially patronizing the Chesapeake & Ohio canal , to open a highway to the West by the Potomac and the Monongahela, and the James River & Kanawha canal, for a commercial highway up the James and down the Kanawha to the Ohio farther to the south...