popularize the place, but there is little to attract the ordinary
traveler; and its distance from a city makes excursions impracticable.

Lying on the Potomac River, about seventy miles below the city of
Washington, one edge of the estate reaches down a steep, wooded bank to
dip into the water, while, stretching back, it rambles on in grassy
meadows and old stubble-fields to the corn-lands and orchards of the
adjoining plantations. Skirting the land on one side is Pope's Creek,
formerly Bridges' Creek, which in Washington's time was used as the main
approach to the estate. On this side there is an easy, undulating slope;
but this entrance has been abandoned. Only at high tide can small boats
enter the creek, and another way had to be adopted. An iron pier nearly
two miles away has been built, and is the landing-place for large and
small craft.

All is quiet here now. There is only the rustle of the leaves, the
drowsy hum of insects, and the interrupted discourse of the
preacher-bird in the clump of trees near which stood the first home of
Washington, to break the stillness on a summer day. No one lives here.
Indeed, no one has lived here since the fire which destroyed the house
and negro cabins, in Washington's boyhood. But here the baby life was
spent, in the homestead founded by his great-grandfather, John
Washington, who came from England in 1657.

Only a heap of broken bits grown over with catnip showed the place of
the great brick chimney the first time I visited the farm; and the
second time these, too, were gone. Now a plain, graceful shaft, bearing
the simple inscription, "Washington's Birthplace," and below, "Erected
by the United States, A.D. 1895," marks the place.