Union. Thus Albany has been a great training school in politics and legislation.
Before the days of railroad building, the Erie Canal was the greatest undertaking that this country had witnessed in the improvement of its transportation facilities. This waterway connected the Great Lakes with the Atlantic by way of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys; and among other results of a far-reaching nature there followed the development of the city of Buffalo, a commercial and manufacturing community founded in the opening years of the nineteenth century, and destined in the twentieth to achieve such growth and splendor as few men are yet bold enough to anticipate.
We have seen in our generation fierce rivalry for the occupation of Khartoum, at the head of Nile navigation, with one expedition succeeding another until the final success of the English under General Kitchener. The possession of Khartoum was known to carry with it the control of the fertile Soudan beyond, as well as to affect the permanent mastery of the valley of the lower Nile to the Delta. In some such manner the French and English in the middle of the eighteenth century appreciated the strategic importance of the point at
