in, with more or less grace, by all but the intractable malcontents. Although from time to time efforts were renewed to reverse the decision and change the location to some place farther north, they always failed.

There were, of course, other considerations than those conveyed in the deal between Hamilton and Jefferson which led to the selection of the Potomac site. But probably the most potent reasons were the facts that this was really the most central and proper location and that Washington must have favored it.

As in all other public questions, so in this, the name and influence of Washington carried the day, and the region was finally agreed upon within a little over six weeks of the adoption of the Constitution by the last of the thirteen States, and within six months the exact spot was chosen. Other commissioners had dallied and fooled about the business, and finally Congress, worried by the delay and the bickering, placed the matter in Washington's hands, with three commissioners to act under him.

Human nature was the same then as it is to-day, and it was recognized that, as soon as it was known that a particular site had been selected, the owners of the lands would be likely to put up the price on the government, and hold them up for a sum far beyond their value. Quite wide latitude was, therefore, given the President in selecting a site, by the act of July 16, 1790, accepting the grants of ten miles square from the States of Maryland and Virginia.

He was authorized to appoint and, by supplying vacancies, to keep in appointment as long as might be necessary, three commissioners, any two of whom should, under his direction, survey and by proper metes and bounds define and limit a district or territory not exceeding ten miles square on the river Potomac at a point between the mouths of the Eastern Branch and the Conococheague (a stream which enters the Potomac at Williamsport, Maryland), which, when defined and located, should be accepted for the permanent seat of government of the United States. The said commissioners, or any two of them, were to have power to purchase or accept any quantity of land on

the southern side of the river within the said district, as the President should deem proper for the use of the United States, and there, prior to the first Monday in December in 1800, should provide suitable buildings for the accommodation of the Congress and for the President and for the public offices of the government of the United States. And it was further provided that on the first Monday in December, 1800, the seat of government of the United States should, by virtue of this act, be transferred to the district aforesaid. The President was authorized and requested to accept grants of money for defraying the expenses of such purchases and buildings; and it was provided that the necessary expenses of the removal from Philadelphia to the new seat of government should be defrayed out of the duties on imposts and tonnage.

With characteristic promptness Washington proceeded to carry out his instructions about laying off the Federal city and district and making the necessary preparations to receive and house the government properly at the termination of the period during which its site was to be in Philadelphia.

Reluctant to relinquish such a prize, and hopeful that something would occur to prevent the removal of the seat of government, the authorities of Philadelphia set to work to spend a large sum of money in the erection of public buildings, including a presidential mansion for Washington himself. After the mansion was erected Washington declined to occupy it, assigning as his reason that it was impossible for him to furnish such a mansion in a suitable style, and he continued to live in the house which he already occupied. It is possible, though there is no record of the fact, that he felt that, if he should become installed in the new grand presidential mansion thus provided, it might be an additional clamp to fix the seat of government in the city of Philadelphia, while his ardent wishes for the establishment lay quite in another direction, on the banks of the Potomac River. Washington therefore pursued his course without deviation.

In a short time Washington, who was already perhaps more familiar than any

other one person with the region lying along the Potomac, for he had personally explored it to the sources of the river, had appointed his commissioners, and on the 24th day of January, 1791, he issued a proclamation declaring that, after duly examining and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the situations within the limits to which he was restricted, he had selected the location of the district for the permanent seat of government of the United States.

His three commissioners were two gentlemen from Maryland, Thomas Johnson and Daniel Carroll, and one from Virginia, David Stuart. It is a commentary on the times that, although a furious quarrel arose later between these commissioners and certain purchasers of lots in the city, in which charges of partiality were made by the latter against the former, notwithstanding the fact that one of these commissioners, Daniel Carroll, was an uncle of one of the chief owners of lands embraced in the new city limits, and another, David Stuart, was the grandson of Mrs. Washington, no exception was ever taken on this account to their appointment.

Washington went about the work with his usual care and began by laying down lines of experiment, beginning "at the Court House in Alexandria in Virginia," and following courses which he himself determined.

Fortunately for the country, the men who were to have most to do with the planning of the Federal city were men of large ideas. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison saw the future of this country with eyes in which it loomed large.

In laying out the city it was decided to do so on a large plan, with a view to the future greatness of the capital of the nation. Washington himself believed, as he wrote his friend Mr. Fairfax, that in a century, should the country keep united, "it would produce a city, though not as large as London, yet with a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe.'

Next to him in the work of planning came his secretary of state, Jefferson, also a man of large ideas and of familiarity with the capitals of Europe, some of which he had viewed with eyes already holding the vision of the new capital in all its magnificence.

In the actual work of planning and surveying the city they secured the services of two able engineers and surveyors. The first of these was Major Andrew Ellicott, an American engineer officer of much distinction and experience, who in 1784 had run the boundary line between Virginia and Pennsylvania, and who, after the Federal city was laid out, was commissioned by the President to settle by survey the boundary dispute between the States of New York and Pennsylvania and to decide in which State lay the town of Erie.

The other surveyor was the young and talented French engineer officer who had left the French army to come to America in 1777, at the age of twenty-two, and take service in the Revolutionary War, and had been commissioned captain of engineers. His name was Pierre Charles L'Enfant. He was one of the most picturesque characters evolved in this picturesque period. He was indebted to Jefferson for his employment in the service which has given him his distinction and on which forever will rest his fame. Such is the fickleness of fortune that for the best part of a century he lay in an unmarked grave in a country graveyard, his name almost forgotten; and then suddenly the light of fame was turned upon him and to him has been given the credit of being the almost sole author of the splendid plan on which the national capiital is laid out.

That he was a man of grand ideas and of extraordinary gifts is certainly true, but it is far from true that to him alone is due the magnificence of the plan of the capital of the United States. Much of this great conception was due to Washington; much, especially in those matters of grand detail which makes Washington city unique among the cities of the country, if not of the world, is due to the universal genius of Thomas Jefferson. To the first commissioners and to Andrew Ellicott was owing the soundness and accuracy of the plan; to L'Enfant was probably due its beauty and taste and harmonious grandeur. They all touched at different points, and to their joint influence exerted then and reasserted over a hundred years later we owe to-day the almost romantic beauty of what has so well been termed this Capital of Capitals.

T this time I had drifted down South America way, and was master of a combination whaling and sealing steamer sailing out of Punta 'renas for the firm

of Amundsen & Co.

Punta Arenas, if you don't happen to know, is at the tip end of Patagonia, in the Magellan Straits. It is now a highly respectable place under the Chilian flag, but there was a time it wasn't. All kinds of human wreckage used to drift onto the west coast of South America in those days, and when the Chilian Government couldn't take care of them any other way they would ship them down through the straits to Punta 'renas. At the time I was there most of the bad ones had been run out, but every now and then a few of the old crew would pop up and worry people into thinking Punta 'renas must still be a hard place, which it wasn't.

Mr. Amundsen lived in a big house up on the plaza where the band-stand was, with a fine open-air veranda in front and a glassed-in conservatory on the side, and aft of the house a garden with a waterfall modelled after something he had left behind him in Norway. He designed the waterfall himself, and over the grand piano in the front room looking out on the plaza was an oil-painting of it—a whale of a painting, done by a stranded Scandinavian who told Mr. Amundsen he'd seen that identical waterfall in Norway many a time, which perhaps he had.

We didn't like Mr. Amundsen any the less because of his collection of old sagas which he used to spin out for hours on end. Whoppers, some of them were, but we, his whaling and sealing captains, we'd sit there and never let on, eating thin Norwegian bread and goats' cheese and dried chips of ptarmigan with Trondhjem beer, and none of us but would have sat longer any time, so that after he got

through there was a chance to hear his daughter Hilda play the grand pianoand sing, maybe, while she played. And I tell you, the thought of that fine old Norwegian and Hilda after months of banging around to the west'ard of Cape Horn in a little whaling steamer-it was surely like coming home to be homebound then.

Norwegian songs they were, and I, American-born, and only half Scandinavian by blood, was probably the one man coming to Amundsen's who didn't know every word of them by heart. But not much of the sentiment of them I missed at that, because in other days I'd cruised off Norway, too, and knew the places the songs told about-the high-running fjords and the little white lighthouses; the fish drying on the rocks and the night sun floating just above the edge of the gray sea; and, again, the long black night of winter and the dead piled up to wait till they could be buried when the snow went in the spring.

But if shore time in Punta 'renas was holiday time, wet days, hard days at sea have their time, too; and Mr. Amundsen and Hilda and Punta 'renas were now a long way behind me. I was whaling and sealing in the South Pacific, and had been doing pretty well, but nothing recordbreaking till one day I picked up a lot of ambergris.

Now I could have stocked a million dollars in a regular way and nobody pay any great attention; but the tale of that find went through half the South Pacific. A dozen whaling and sealing masters boarded me in one month to see if it was so, and after I'd told them the story of it about forty-five times, I began to see myself telling it to old Amundsen and Hilda in the big front room looking out on the plaza, her father and I having a late supper of flat bread and the goats' cheese and the dried ptarmigan chips with

her moving away. And then all quiet till we came back.

Well, whoever did it must have had us timed pretty well. They must have had a gang hid in the lumber bark and a steamer hid somewhere in the straits near by waiting for us. It looked as if there was nothing for us to do but take our loss and keep on for Punta 'renas, but first I went to the masthead and had a look out.

Opposite Pouvenir Bay the Straits of Magellan are at their widest. From the crow's-nest there was a good stretch of sea to look at. To the west'ard was a touch of smoke, which might be the steamer which looted us; surely she didn't go to the east'ard, for there it was open water with nothing in sight. To the northward, toward Patagonia, of course she would not go, because Punta 'renas was there. But I had a look that way, and as I looked I could see what looked like an open boat heading our way; and I wondered who she would be and what she would be after in a place like Terra del Fuego.

They came skipping on at a great clip for an open boat. They were running her to a long main-sheet, but keeping a tight hand on the sheet. As they drew nearer I see she was white-painted, and pretty soon I see she was too big to be anything but a war-ship's sailing cutter, and soon again I made out that they were a crew of American naval officers and bluejackets.

They went out of their way some to sweep under the stern of the bark, and I noticed they all took a look up at her and back at her, wondering, as I thought, how she came to go ashore. They held on for the inside of the bay and ran straight up onto a little reach of pebbly beach; and no sooner grounded than most of them went tearing across the spit with rifles and shot-guns. I see what they were now-it was a hunting party.

Without wasting a second they began to blaze away at the wild ducks as they came swooping down from the west. In that country the wild game don't know what a man looks like, and as it was late in the afternoon, with the ducks coming back for the night from the west'ard, the shooting was good. Swooping along the shore they came, across the mouth of the

bay, flock after flock so close-set and lowflying that they didn't need guns. They could have sat on the beach and hove up stones or driftwood and killed 'em as they went kiting by, sixty miles or more an hour to the east'ard.

After twenty minutes or so they must have thought that kind of shooting was too easy, for part of them went off into the brush and the others came back to the spit of beach and, with some kindlings from their boat and some driftwood and brush, started a fire. It was a north wind, and I could smell the ducks cooking and the coffee making, and I couldn't hold off any longer. I rowed myself over in our second boat. The senior line officer of the party, a lieutenant, invited me to join them, which I did, and pretty soon I was eating broiled duck and drinking real American coffee, with bacon and eggs, and forgetting my troubles.

After supper we sat around and talked, and they told me what had happened to the lumber bark. She had been lured inshore by false lights the night before and boarded by a gang under Red Dick, who had cleaned her out of stores and what money they had, and had driven the crew off in the morning after beating up most of them by way of diverting himself. Then the bark's captain and his crew rowed across the Straits of Punta Arenas in their quarter-boat looking for satisfaction. Nobody there could do anything for them, because nothing less. than a war-ship could have overcome Red Dick, and there was no Chilean war-ship nearer than Valparaiso, and that was six days' steaming away.

"But how did that lumber captain know it was Red Dick?" I asked at this point.

"He didn't know," answered the officer who'd been talking. "But when he described him everybody in Punta Arenas said it was Red Dick. But aren't you an American?"

I said I was and told them my experience, and they all said what a pity my ship wasn't under the American flag so they could put it up to their captain, and be sure he would send a party after Red Dick. And they would all like nothing better than to join that party, and an easy matter all 'round, as their ship was