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 prospect of seeing you again.

We should not overlook the fact that Washington declined all gifts, including a donation from Virginia, for his services as General during the war.  He had refused to take any pay, merely keeping a strict account of what he spent for the Government from 1775 to 1782.  This amounted to over L15,000 and covered only sums actually disbursed by him for the army.  Unlike Marlborough, Nelson, and Wellington, and other foreign chieftains on whom grateful countrymen conferred fortunes and high titles, Washington remains as the one great state-founder who literally gave his services to his country.

Sparks gives the following interesting account of the way in which Washington spent his days after his return to Mount Vernon: