later highly praise. Proceeding to New York at a cost of six
dollars, he is struck by the uncouthness of the public buildings,
churches excepted, the widespread passion for music, dancing, and
the theater, the craze for sleighing, and the promise which the
harbor gave of becoming the finest in America. Not a few
travelers in this early period gave expression to their belief in
the future greatness of New York City. These prophecies, taken in
connection with the investment of eight millions of dollars which
New Yorkers made in toll-roads in the first seven years of this
new century, incline one to believe that the influence of the
Erie Canal as a factor in the development of the city may have
been unduly emphasized, great though it was.

>From New York Baily returned to Baltimore and went on to
Washington. The records of all travelers to the site of the new
national capital give much the same picture of the countryside.
It was a land worn out by tobacco culture and variously described
as "dried up," "run down," and "hung out to dry." Even George
Washington, at Mount Vernon, was giving up tobacco culture and
was attempting new crops by a system of rotation. Cotton was
being grown in Maryland, but little care was given to its culture
and manufacture. Tobacco was graded in Virginia in accordance
with the rigidity of its inspection at Hanover Court House,
Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Cabin-Point: leaf worth sixteen
shillings at Richmond was worth twenty-one at Hanover Court
House; if it was refused at all places, it was smuggled to the
West Indies or consumed in the country. Meadows were rapidly
taking the place of tobacco-fields, for the planters preferred to
clear new land rather than to enrich the old.