248 SPOFFORD 



passengers, which generally consist of squalling children, stink- 

 ing negroes, and republicans smoking cigars." 



He speaks of Blodget's famous lottery hotel thus: "The 

 hotel is already a ruin: a great part of its roof has fallen in, 

 and the rooms are left to be occupied gratuitously by the miser- 

 able Scotch and Irish emigrants. The few ranges of houses 

 which were begun some years ago have remained so long waste 

 and unfinished that they are now for the most part dilapidated." 



Gouverneur Morris, who attended Jefferson's inauguration in 

 1801, records that the road from Washington to Annapolis was 

 so deep in mud that the stage was stalled and stuck fast. It 

 took him ten hours to go the twenty-five miles. Of Washington he 

 wrote : " We only need here houses, cellars, kitchens, scholarly 

 men, amiable women, and a few other such trifles, to possess a 

 perfect city. In a word, this is the best city in the world to live 

 in — in the future." Perhaps the present citizens of Washington 

 will agree with him. 



In 1800, John Cotton Smith, a Connecticut member of Con- 

 gress on his way to attend its first session, Nov. 17, 1800, in the 

 new city, recorded that he dined at Baltimore on canvas-back 

 ducks, which he pronounced a dish of unequalled and exquisite 

 flavor. He found one wing of the Capitol only erected, which, 

 with the President's House, "both constructed with white sand- 

 stone, were shining objects in dismal contrast with the scene 

 around them." Not an avenue was visible save one which he 

 calls " a road with two buildings on each side of it, called the 

 New Jersey Avenue." Pennsylvania Avenue was nothing but 

 " a deep morass covered with alder-bushes." He says there ap- 

 peared to be but two really comfortable habitations in the city, 

 those of Daniel Carroll (whom he calls Dudley Carroll) and of 

 Notley Young. In spite of the unfavorable aspect presented by 

 the city, this Yankee Congressman expresses his admiration for 

 its local position. He extols the view of the majestic river, " the 

 cultivated fields and blue hills of Maryland and Virginia, the 

 whole constituting a prospect of surprising beauty and grandeur." 



When Baron von Humboldt returned from his scientific expe- 

 dition in Central and South America, in 1804, he visited Wash- 

 ington, and was taken to Capitol Hill to enjoy the prospect. 



