Hon. John Cotton Smith, of Connecticut, a distinguished member of Congress, of the Federal school of politics, also gives his picture of Washington in 1800: “Our approach to the city was accompanied with sensations not easily described. One wing of the Capitol only had been erected, which, with the President’s house, a mile distant from it, both constructed with white sandstone, were shining objects in dismal contrast with the scene around them. Instead of recognizing the avenues and streets portrayed on the plan of the city, not one was visible, unless we except a road, with two buildings on each side of it, called the New Jersey Avenue. The Pennsylvania, leading, as laid down on paper, from the Capitol to the presidential mansion, was then nearly the whole distance a deep morass, covered with alder bushes which were cut through the width of the intended avenue during the then ensuing winter. Between the President’s house and Georgetown a block of houses had been erected, which then bore and may still bear, the name of the _six buildings_. There were also other blocks, consisting of two or three dwelling-houses, in different directions, and now and then an insulated wooden habitation, the intervening spaces, and indeed the surface of the city generally, being covered with shrub-oak bushes on the higher grounds, and on the marshy soil either trees or some sort of shrubbery. Nor was the desolate aspect of the place a little augmented by a number of unfinished edifices at Greenleaf’s Point, and on an eminence a short distance from it, commenced by an individual whose name they bore, but the state of whose funds compelled him to abandon them, not only unfinished, but in a ruinous condition. There appeared to be but two really comfortable habitations in all respects, within the bounds of the city, one of which belonged to Dudley Carroll, Esq., and the other to Notley Young, who were the former proprietors of a large proportion of the land appropriated to the city, but who reserved for their own accommodation ground sufficient for gardens and other useful appurtenances. The roads in every direction were muddy and unimproved. A sidewalk was attempted in one instance by a covering formed of the chips of the stones which had been hewn for the Capitol. It extended but a little way and was of little value, for in dry weather the sharp fragments cut our shoes, and in wet weather covered them with white mortar, in short, it was a “new settlement.” The houses, with one or two exceptions, had been very recently erected, and the operation greatly hurried in view of the approaching transfer of the national government. A laudable desire was manifested by what few citizens and residents there were, to render our condition as pleasant as circumstances would permit. One of the blocks of buildings already mentioned was situated on the east side of what was intended for the Capitol square, and being