Congress only planted trees upon the Mall and other public grounds, much would have been done to add to the beauty and attractions of the place for the wealthy of other cities. Within a few years a more enlightened and liberal spirit has prevailed, and the appropriation for the Aqueduct was the beginning of a new era.

We shall not enlarge upon other causes which retarded the progress of the city-the lottery scheme for building a City Hall, which left a city debt of $200,000, and the Canal scheme, which left another debt of $600,000. The extent of the last undertaking, however, demands a short notice.

THE CANAL.

The visitor who has heard so much during this war of the rebel measures to obstruct navi

expend money raised by taxation, and are held responsible for all deficiencies in street improvements. Works commenced by an appropriation of Congress sometimes go to ruin before a sum is set apart to complete them. Either the Government should take the sole charge of the avenues connecting public buildings, as they have done with Pennsylvania avenue, or they should vote a certain sum per annum in lieu of taxes, to be expended by the corporation, under direction of the President; or should provide that one half of the expense of opening, grading, and paving all streets of a width of one hundred feet or more should be paid by the Government in proportion as the work progresses.

gation on the Chesapeake and Ohio or Cumberland canal, will perhaps have but little idea of the immense national importance at one time attached to that work. It was an attempt to carry out the plan, alluded to in the debates,* of a water connection between the Ohio and the Potomac. Before the cession of the District, Virginia and Maryland had incorporated a company to improve the navigation of the river Potomac, in the stock of which Washington was largely interested. The object was to construct a canal thirty feet wide and three feet deep, as far as the town of Cumberland, in the county of Alleghany, in Maryland, under the confident belief that when that rich coal region should be reached, a new and greatly enlarged source of trade would be opened, which could not fail to enrich Georgetown and Alexandria. In 1823 President Monroe called the attention of Congress to the efforts then recently made to revive interest in the work, and submitted to them the importance of making it to some extent national, by enlarging its dimensions, and extending it to the Ohio river. In 1828 Congress subscribed $1,000,000 on condition that a new company should double the dimensions, and extend it according to a survey made by Gen. Bernard and others. The estimated * Ante, page 52.

expense to Cumberland was thus increased from five to eight millions. The city of Washington subscribed $1,000,000, and Georgetown and Alexandria $250,000 each. Maryland and Virginia furnished the rest of the money. But, as usually happens, the estimate was less than the real cost. Maryland continued to run up an enormous debt on that behalf; but the policy of Government on the subject of internal improvements having changed, Congress would do no more. The long delay was ruinous to the District. Cities taxed themselves, and borrowed money to pay the interest, until finally the Washington payments of interest ceased, and the Holland creditors* were about satisfying themselves out of a levy upon private property, when Congress assumed the principal, leaving the corporation still involved for money previously borrowed to pay interest to the extent of over half a million. The Canal was finally finished to Cumberland (184 miles) by Maryland, and a large coal trade is transacted upon it, but the benefit all goes to Alexandria and Georgetown; yet the business has not equalled the sanguine expectations of its projectors, and, with the enormous cost of the Canal ($12,000000) and the railroad competition, it is doubtful

* A banking firm in Holland furnished the money.

if it will ever pay an interest. Any extension to the Ohio is of course out of the question. When it was first proposed railroads were unknown.

IMPROVEMENTS.

The improvements of late years have been very great; but the space is so large that five or six hundred houses a year make but little impression; and not until there are half a million of people, will the plan be developed to any advantage. There has been too little private wealth to admit of much display, and few of the houses offer any pretensions to good taste, not to say elegance. A manifest improvement, however, is perceptible within a few years.

There is not a church in the place that will bear comparison with those in Northern cities. In a community where so many of the residents are dependent on salaries, and where the congregations are so constantly changing, large investments in pew property are not to be expected. But this does not excuse the shocking bad taste which compels the elderly people to climb a flight of stairs, in order to accommodate the Sunday school children on the first floor. Hotel buildings are also behind those of all other cities.

HEALTH.

The impression which so generally prevails that Washington is unhealthy, is founded upon the prevalence of chills and fever in some localities. This is the case in all unsettled places on water, south of New England; but disappears as soon as low grounds are all filled up. It formerly prevailed above Twentythird street in New York. In Washington the population is scattered over so much surface that few streets are thoroughly finished; but the miasmatic influence seems to have departed wherever ravines are filled up, as on the hill north of the Capitol. It is probable that ere long the skill of engineers will devise some method of doing away with the flats in the Potomac near the Long Bridge, which, with the grading of the streets southwest of the President's House, will remove the evil from that quarter. It is remarkable that the chills have never existed in the centre of the settled part of the city-although that horrid Canal, one would think, could not fail to breed a pestilence.

The only wonder is that more deaths do not occur among the strangers congregated here, when we consider their irregularities of life—meals at all hours, and nightly entertain

ments.