THE FOUNDING OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL 235 



after year, that nearly all the rich virgin lands of Maryland and 

 Virginia were exhausted and ruined by it. Most of the pine- 

 grown and shrub-covered thickets that surround Washington 

 today, represent worn-out and abandoned tobacco fields, on 

 both sides of the Potomac. A century ago, the huge hogsheads 

 of tobacco were rolled to market for many miles, each rigged 

 with tongue and axle, and propelled up hill or held back down 

 hill, by negroes, mules and oxen. 



The first white man authentically known to have set foot on 

 the soil of the District of Columbia was Captain Henry Fleet, 

 an English mariner and trader. He made an expedition up 

 the Potomac in 1632, to buy beaver furs from the Indians, 

 whose language he knew, having been much among them in 

 Virginia. He anchored six miles below the Falls of the Po- 

 tomac, where he got three hundred weight of beaver from the 

 Nacostines, or Anacostian tribe, whose name is perpetuated in 

 the Eastern branch of the Potomac. Fleet thus describes the 

 region : 



" This place, beyond all question, is the most pleasant and 

 healthful place, in all this country, and most convenient for 

 habitation ; the air temperate in summer, and not violent in 

 winter. It aboundeth with all manner of fish. And as for 

 deer, bears, buffaloes, turkeys, the woods do swarm with them, 

 and the soil is exceedingly fertile. * * * The 27th of June I 

 manned my shallop and went up with the flood, the tide rising 

 about four feet in height at this place. We had not rowed 

 above three miles, when one might hear the falls to roar, about 

 six miles distant, by which it appears that the river is sepa- 

 rated with rocks, but only in that one place, for beyond is a 

 fair river." 



This Hehry Fleet was a member of the Maryland House of 

 Assembly in 1638, and of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 

 1652. He lived for a time near the mouth of the Potomac, at 

 a place still known as Fleet's Point. 



RELIGIOUS INTERESTS. 



What of the religion of those who built up the region in 

 which we live? All records attest that the earliest settlers were 



