THE FOUNDING OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL 247 



to the American seat of government, are the worst roads I passed 

 in the country, particularly the mail stage road from Bladens- 

 burg to Washington, and from thence to x\lexandria. Deep 

 ruts, rocks, and stumps of trees every minute impede your pro- 

 gress, and threaten your limbs with dislocation. Speculation, 

 the life of the American, embraces the design of the new city. 

 Several companies purchased lots and began to build, with an 

 ardor that soon promised a large and populous city. Before 

 they arrived at the attic story, the failure was manifest ; and in 

 that state are the walls of many houses begun on a plan of 

 elegance. The President's house, the offices of state, and a 

 little theatre, where an itinerant company repeated the lines of 

 Shakespeare, Otvvay, and Dryden to empty benches, terminate 

 the view of the Pennsylvania, or Grand Avenue. This is the 

 largest Avenue ; in fact I never heard of more than that and the 

 New Jersey Avenue. Except some houses uniformly built, with 

 some public-houses, and here and there a little grog-shop, this 

 boasted Avenue is as much a wilderness as Kentucky. Some 

 half-starved cattle browsing among the bushes present a melan- 

 choly spectacle to a stranger, whose expectation has been 

 warmed up by the illusive descriptions of speculative writers. 

 So very thinly is the city peopled, and so little is it frequented, 

 that quails and other birds are constantly shot within a hundred 

 yards of the capitol. Strangers, after viewing the offices of 

 State, are apt to inquire for the city, while they are in its very 

 centre." 



Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, who was in Washington in 

 1804, while Jefferson was President, wrote of 



" This embryo capital, where fancy sees 

 Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees ; 

 Which second-sighted seers, ev'n now, adorn 

 With shrines unbuilt, and heroes j'et unborn, 

 Though nought but woods and Jefferson they sec, 

 Where streets should run and sages ought to be." 



On his way hither, the poet wrote from Baltimore: *' I have 

 passed the Potomac, the Rappahannock, the Occoquan, the 

 Patapsio (meaning the Patapsco) and many other rivers, with 

 names as barbarous as the inhabitants. The mail takes twelve 



