It was easy for the new administrators to show in theory how the Central Government should be restricted to certain actions; it was impossible to avoid entering upon certain new activities as progress demanded from time to time. Take such a simple matter as the national capital. Suddenly transferred to the woods on the banks of the Potomac, the National Government found no such accommodations as the two cities in which it had previously been lodged had afforded. One completed and one incomplete wing of the Capitol building, an empty and bare President's mansion, one tavern, and a few houses, with streets indicated only by felled trees, formed the Athens of America, pronounced by Robert Morris the very best city in the world for a "future" residence. Members of Congress who traversed the three miles of mud road to Georgetown, where the only comfortable lodgings were to be obtained, would willingly have reduced the scale upon which the capital was laid out. Very early it became the "City of Magnificent Distances." However crude the city might be, the soil on which it rested belonged exclusively to the United States. It was the only spot of any magnitude which could be so claimed. It was due to the generosity of two neighouring States, Virginia and Maryland. To the same charity was owed the money which had partly built the two wings of the Capitol and the President's mansion. Nevertheless, land and buildings do not make a city. Money for the construction of streets, it was at first supposed, would come from the sale of lots. "Path-ways" were built from this resource under direction of members of the Cabinet before the Government was transferred from Philadelphia. Money was advanced on such expectation both by Congress and by the State of Maryland. Yet the advent of Government and the inauguration of Jefferson found the work incomplete. Members of Congress who stepped gingerly in their low shoes over the paths made of chips of stone from the new buildings, or who attempted the mile of cleared roadway between the two administration buildings, received an object lesson in the necessity for improvements which speedily overcame conscientious scruples. [Illustration: THE CITY OF WASHINGTON. A drawing made about 1800 before the site was graded. The Capitol is seen at the left of the masts.]