To Washington and Major L’Enfant, who in an antique tavern in Georgetown met the heirs and descendants of these pioneers to negotiate the transfer of property to the Government, the strange story was told that one, Francis Pope, in the year 1663, had had a vision wherein he beheld a stately house of parliament on what is now Capitol Hill. In pursuance of this dream he had purchased that eminence and had called it “Rome,” and in further keeping with his sense of divination had given to a sluggish yellow stream at the base of the hill the name of “Tiber.” Pope, it was asserted, died in the faith that the wooded hill he had christened would some day be crowned with a grand edifice devoted to the deliberations of a mighty empire. Some of the more irreverent settlers, dolefully observing the continued remoteness of Pope’s uninhabited “Rome” from any possible capital, derisively substituted, it was claimed, the name Goose Creek for the Tiber and denied the hill the dignity of even a colloquial title. The Tiber still flows on, but in the obscurity of a modern sewer. The poet, Tom Moore, who stumbled through the bogs and over the “magnificent distances” of what pretended to be a capital city in 1804, turned the story around and pictured the founders of the city reveling in burlesque dreams concerning the future of the capital, and attempting to mimic the glory of Rome and give absurd dignity to Goose Creek by naming it the Tiber. [Illustration: PIERRE CHARLES L’ENFANT.] The original maps of the city, drawn by Major L’Enfant in 1790, give both names to the stream, and there has come to light a much older document, proving the groundlessness of the poet’s lampoon, and giving substance to the romantic tale concerning Francis Pope and his prophecy. It is his original abstract of title and reads as follows: “June the 5th, 1663. Layd out for Francis Pope of this Province Gentleman a parcel of land in Charles County called Rome lying on the East side of the Anacostian River beginning at a marked oak standing by the river side, the bounded tree of Captain Robert Troop and running north by the river for breadth the length 200 perches to a bounded oak standing at the mouth of a bay or inlet called Tiber ... and now laid out for 400 acres more or less.” Whether this nomenclature in the title attests the dream of this pioneer or was adopted by him in a spirit of whimsical humor may be left to the fancy of the reader, but the fact that 237 years ago Capitol Hill was called Rome, and a stream at its base the Tiber, gives dramatic interest to the reputed prophecy. It is one of the several beautiful traditions that impart a romantic interest to the genesis of Washington.