The six Cabinet members, with their one hundred and thirty-two subordinates, made the journey overland at various dates during the summer, and in October the archives followed. These filled about a dozen large boxes, which, with the office furniture, were brought down by sea in a packet-boat and landed on a wharf at the mouth of Tiber Creek, a tributary of the Potomac which then ran through the city but was later converted into a sewer. All Washington, numbering perhaps three thousand persons, turned out to greet the vessel; and amid cheers, ringing of bells, and blasts from an antique cannon brought forth for the occasion, its precious contents were carried ashore. “The Department buildings” to which they were consigned were a wonderful assortment. The Treasury was a two-story brick house at the southeast corner of the President’s grounds, the War Office a still unfinished replica of it at the southwest corner. The Post-office Department found shelter in a private house in which only half the floors were laid and four rooms plastered; while the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Attorney-general had to direct their affairs from their lodgings. All these temporary accommodations were sought as near as possible to the President’s House. Congress had striven, for its greater ease of access, to have the Departments quartered near the Capitol; but Washington had set his face resolutely against every such proposal, citing the experience of his own secretaries, who had been so pestered with needless visits from Senators and Representatives that some of them “had been obliged to go home and deny themselves, in order to transact current business.” Which shows that one modern nuisance has a fairly ancient precedent. Members of both houses of Congress came straggling in all through the first three weeks of November, to [Illustration: _General Washington’s Office in Georgetown_] find most of the best rooms in the two or three hotels and the little cluster of boarding-houses already occupied by the executive functionaries and their families. President Adams, who had preceded them by a few weeks, was not much better off even in the official abode reserved for him, if we may call his wife as a witness.