PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANTS: LOSS OF HEALTH. 309 



was unsubdued, and, stepping cautiously from bog to bog, 

 we soon arrived at a spring which they called the Congress 

 Spring, and we drank the water which tasted as it does 



now Twenty-six years had passed and what a 



change ! A beautiful city had arisen where there were only 

 a morass and a pine barren. Beautiful lawns adorned with 

 statuary now meet the eyes, and the fashionable world, in 

 the summer months, throng this favorite resort. 



Once more, in May 1824, with his usual com- 

 panion in journeying, Mr. Wadsworth, he left home 

 and travelled southward as far as Washington. 



We were just in time to see both Houses of Congress 

 in session. We dined with Mr. J. C. Calhoun, a distin- 

 guished graduate of Yale College, who was the Secretary 

 of War, and who received us with great cordiality. He 

 explained to us his plans for internal improvement, which 

 were extensive and detailed, and included not only a ship- 

 canal between Lakes Superior and Huron, by the Sault 

 St. Mary, but even a cut across the neck of Cape Cod, thus 

 uniting Buzzard's Bay with Massachusetts, or Cape Cod 

 Bay, and saving a dangerous navigation around the Cape. 

 But all this was changed when sectional jealousies arose, 

 and the high-minded, honorable patriot became the antag- 

 onist of internal improvement, and was narrowed down to 

 a South Carolina politician. President Monroe was then 

 at the head of the Government. He had been kind to me 

 in 1805, when he was our minister in London, and I called 

 upon him there in company with the late Professor Peck 

 of Harvard. I paid my respects again to him when he 

 visited New Haven on his Eastern tour in 1816, and was 

 promptly recognized. We now called upon him in the 

 official palace, and were received with that mild benignity 

 which corresponded with his amiable character. As we 

 then thought of travelling into Virginia, his native State, 



