y week-day
with the lumbering Conestoga six-horse wagons, in which the farmers
of Maryland and Central Pennsylvania brought loads of wheat and of
corn, taking back dry goods, groceries, salt, and, during the
fishing season, fresh shad and herring. Another source of trade
was the Potomac River, which was navigable above Georgetown as far
as Cumberland in long, flat-bottomed boats, sharp at both ends,
called "gondolas." These boats were poled down the Potomac to the
Great Falls, twelve miles above Georgetown, where a canal with
locks was constructed, running around the falls and back to the
river. The same plan of avoiding the rapids was suggested by George
Washington, who was once president of the company. The canal was
finished in 1793, but it never yielded a sufficient revenue to pay
expenses.

The "gondolas" brought down considerable quantities of flour, corn,
pork, and iron, much of which was shipped at Georgetown to other
ports. During the year 1812 several hundred hogsheads of Louisiana
sugar were brought by way of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the
Potomac Rivers to Georgetown. This was a realization of Washington's
idea that the city which he founded and which bore his name would
become an _entrepot_ for the products of the Mississippi Valley
destined for shipment abroad. He displayed his faith in this belief
by the purchase of wharf lots, which would not to-day bring what
he paid for them.

The Union Tavern at Georgetown was a well-patronized and fashionable
inn during the first quarter of the present century. Among the
distinguished men who were its guests were Louis Philippe, Count
Volney, Baron Humboldt, Fulton (the inventor), Talleyrand, Jerome
Bonaparte, Washington Irving, General St. Clair, Lorenzo Dow (the
eccentric preacher), Francis S. Key (author of the "Star Spangled
Banner"), with John Randolph and scores of other Congressmen, who
used to ride to and from the Capitol in a large stagecoach with
seats on the top and called the "Royal George."

When my mother was born in Georgetown, in 1799, the neighbors were
startled by the repeated firing of a heavily charged musket beneath
the window of her mother's room. It was a welcome-into-the-world
salute fired by "Old Yarrah," a very aged Mahometan, who had been
brought as a slave from Guinea to Georgetown, where my grandfather
had shown him some kindness, which he thus acknowledged after the
custom of his own people.

General Washington used t