If the shore is much what it was in Washington’s infancy, the river and its tributaries are even more so. Those who know the Potomac at Washington or amid the mountains that hem it in further west and north, may well have no suspicion of the vast flood which it becomes in the lower part of its course. Fifty miles below Washington the river is from four to six miles wide. Sixty miles below the capital it has spread to a width of ten miles, and in the lower forty miles of its course it is from ten to eighteen miles wide, a great estuary of the Chesapeake, with tributaries, almost nameless on the map, that fairly dwarf the Hudson. The busy steamers plying these waters to carry the produce of the plantations to the markets of Baltimore and Washington leave the Potomac from time to time to lose themselves in its tortuous tributaries. Cape on cape recedes to unfold new and unexpected depths of loveliness; little harbors sit low on the tidal waters backed by wooded bluffs, behind which lie the rich plantations of Northumberland and Westmoreland. A soft-spoken race of easy-going Virginians haunts the landing-places. Fishermen, still pursuing the traditional methods of the eighteenth century, fetch in sea trout and striped bass and pike to sell them at absurdly low prices, and for nine months of the year oystermen are busy. Every planter who will can maintain his pound net in the shallows of the Potomac or one of its tributaries, and all along the lower course of the stream the planter may secure his own oysters almost without leaving the shore. The dainties that filled colonial larders in Washington’s youth are still the food of the region--oysters and clams, soft-shell crabs, wild duck, geese, and swan in winter, and a bewildering variety of fish.