For instance, in surveying the city the directors of the Ohio Company provided for wide streets and public parks. The principal streets of 90 feet in width ran parallel to the Muskingum River and were designated by numbers. They were intersected by cross streets named after Washington, Putnam and other Revolutionary generals. The bank of the Muskingum was set aside as a “commons” and dedicated forever to public use. It was called “The Bouery” and is today a public park. Within the city limits the surveyors found extensive earthworks and mounds which supplied mysterious evidence of a prehistoric race, which had sometime constructed a city on the same site. Colonel John May described the cutting of a tree that had grown for 443 years on one of the earthworks. The larger elevated square was named Capitolium, the smaller was called Quadranaou, and the road with high embankments from the river to the “Forty acre fort” was officially designated as Sacra Via. These were all dedicated as public property and are so today. A creek which emptied into the Muskingum below Campus Martius was called the Tiber, after the river near Rome. This use of classical names indicates that the cultured founders of Marietta were familiar with Latin and Greek literature. The first cabins had been built at “the point” and a stockade erected enclosing some four and a half acres. The Indians told the settlers of the flood danger, showing them driftwood and laconically pointed out that “where water has been water will be again.” In platting the city-to-be the pioneers, therefore, laid out an extremely broad street on high ground as the intended main street of the town, and named it for Washington. The complete dependence of the time upon river transportation and the distance of Washington Street from the Ohio River prevented its attaining its designed purpose and the business district of the city has never since realized the expectation of those first settlers. Early in May, when the crops had been planted in the clearing and cabins had been constructed at “Picketed Point,” Putnam decided from his study of treaties at the war office in New York that the tribes would not permit their lands to be occupied without a struggle. May wrote in his Journal: “At Boston we have frequent alarms of fire, and innundations of the tide; here the Indians answer the same purpose.” On account of the danger of Indian attack all men not needed in the survey were put to work at the construction of an impregnable fort. This defense was called Campus Martius, after a name applied to a grassy plain along the Tiber in ancient Rome where military drills and elections had been held. The phrase literally means “a field dedicated to Mars, the god of war.”