d burial was the fearsome sequence of only a few
hours. There was a Board of Health and a Quarantine Officer, but
ignorance of sanitation laws and preventive medicine resulted in
appalling epidemics brought in by visiting vessels.

Fire, too, ravaged the town. There were two major conflagrations in the
early nineteenth century, one in 1810 and another in 1824, in each of
which at least fifty buildings were consumed. The fire in the latter
year all but demolished the west side of Fairfax Street between King
and Prince Streets. George Washington is credited with having founded
the first fire company and giving to the city what was then the finest
of modern hand pumpers--a magnificent affair of red paint, brass
trimmings, and leather buckets. A law of the town made it mandatory for
each householder or proprietor of a dwelling or storehouse to furnish
leather buckets of at least two-and-one-half-gallon capacity at "his or
her expense"--in quantity equal to the stories of his house; no
proprietor was expected, however, to provide more than three buckets.
The buckets were numbered and lettered with the names of the owners,
whose duty it was to send or carry them to any place where a fire broke
out, or to "throw them into the street so that they may be taken
there."[54]

The fire companies at the first alarm, in scarlet shirts, turned out on
shortest notice, at a dead run on "shanks' mare." Woe betide the member
who was late, for he was fined right heavily. Pumping by hand to put out
a fire was a laborious affair and slackers were not tolerated. Even with
the best of will and the most earnest of pumpers, the fires got out of
hand and took a terrible toll of the early buildings. While insides were
gutted, the walls often remained to contain again an interior of beauty
and dignity.

Alexandria suffered more from the War of 1812 than from the Revolution.
Before Washington fell to the British in 1814, Alexandria was forced to
capitulate and had to pay a high indemnity for physical protection. This
disaster, coupled with the failure of the canal which was to open up the
vast Ohio country, all but wrecked the best financial hopes and plans of
the city.

The opening of the Potomac River for navigation, to connect with the
Ohio, was a project close to General Washington's heart. He had
entertained this dream from the time of his first western venture in
1754. He calculated, plotted, and surveyed distances, and from 1770
onward hi