At a distance of four miles below Great Falls, the stream widens and flows quietly for ten miles; and then descends thirty-seven feet in a second series of cascades known as Little Falls, about three miles above Georgetown. The Potomac, thus released from the hills above Georgetown, expands into a broad lake-like river, and receives the Anacostia at Washington, where it meets the tide. About twenty-five miles below Washington, it becomes an estuary from two to eight miles wide, and enters the Chesapeake Bay, after having made a journey of four hundred miles.
The chief places of interest on the banks of the Potomac are, of course, Washington, _Arlington House_, _Mount Vernon_, and the sleepy old town of Alexandria founded in 1748 and once a rival of Annapolis and Baltimore. It is full of associations with Washington, whose estate, _Mount Vernon_, is but a few miles below. _Mount Vernon_, in Washington’s time, an estate of two thousand acres, belonged originally to his half-brother, Lawrence, who named it for Admiral Vernon under whom he had served.
_Arlington House_, the residence of the adopted son of General Washington, George Washington Parke Custis, came into possession of Gen. Robert E. Lee through his wife who was the daughter of Mr. Custis. The house, built from drawings of the temple at Pæstum, near Naples, stands on a bluff two hundred feet above the river about four miles from Washington. The building with its two wings has a frontage of 140 feet and the portico sixty feet long is surmounted by a pediment resting on eight Doric columns twenty-six feet high and five feet in diameter. On the south were the gardens and greenhouses, and in the rear the kitchens, slave quarters and stables. In 1863 _Arlington House_ and the estate of 1,000 acres was sold under the Confiscation Act and taken possession of by the National Government; and in 1867 the grounds were appropriated for a National Cemetery.
The Potomac was the scene of skirmishes in 1814, when Alexandria surrendered to the British; and in this connection it is interesting to learn what Admiral Napier, who commanded the fleet, has to say regarding the ascent of the river:
“The river Potomac is navigable for frigates as high up as Washington, but the navigation is extremely intricate and nature has done much for the protection of the country by placing one-third of the way up, very extensive and intricate shoals, called the ‘Kettle Bottoms.’ They are composed of oyster banks of various dimensions, some not larger than a boat, with passages between them.
“The best channel is on the Virginia shore; but the charts gave us mostly very bad directions and no pilots could be procured. A frigate had attempted some time before to effect a passage, and, after being frequently aground, gave it up as impossible. The American frigates themselves never attempted it with their guns in, and were several weeks in the passage from the naval yard at Washington to the mouth of the Potomac.
“When the tide was favourable and the wind light, we warped by hand; with the ebb and the wind strong, the hawsers were brought to the capstan. This operation began at daylight and was carried on without interruption till dark and lasted five days, during which the squadron warped upwards of fifty miles, and on the evening of the fifth day anchored off Maryland Point. The same day the public buildings of Washington were burnt. The reflection of the fire on the heavens was plainly seen from the ships, much to our mortification and disappointment, as we concluded that that act was committed at the moment of evacuating the town....
“The following morning, to our great joy, the wind became fair, and we made all sail up the river, which now assumed a more pleasing aspect. At five o’clock in the afternoon _Mount Vernon_--the retreat of the illustrious Washington--opened to our view and showed us, for the first time since we entered the Potomac, a gentleman’s residence. Higher up the river, on the opposite side, Fort Washington appeared to our anxious eyes; and, to our great satisfaction, it was considered assailable.
“A little before sunset the squadron anchored just out of gun-shot; the bomb vessels at once took up their positions to cover the frigates in the projected attack at daylight next morning and began throwing shells. The garrison, to our great surprise, retreated from the Fort; and, a short time after, Fort Washington was blown up--which left the capital of America, and the populous town of Alexandria, open to the squadron, without the loss of a man.
“A deputation from the town arrived to treat; but Captain Gordon declined entering into any arrangement till the squadron arrived before Alexandria. The channel was buoyed, and next morning the 27th, we anchored abreast of the town and dictated terms.
“Alexandria is a large well-built town and a place of great trade. It is eight miles below Washington, where few merchant ships go, and is, in fact, the mercantile capital, and, before the war, was a most flourishing town, but at the time of its capture had been going rapidly to decay. Agricultural produce was of little value; the storehouses were full of it. We learnt that the army after destroying Barney’s flotilla, had made a forced march on Washington, beat the Americans at Bladensburg, destroyed the public buildings and navy yard, and retreated to their ships. Had our little squadron been favoured by wind, the retreat would have been made along the right bank of the Potomac, under our protection, and the whole country in the course of that river would have been laid under contribution.”
THE EUPHRATES
GEORGE RAWLINSON
Euphrates is probably a word of Arian origin. It is not improbable that in common parlance the name was soon shortened to its modern form of _Frát_, which is almost exactly what the Hebrew literation expresses.
The Euphrates is the largest, the longest, and by far the most important of the rivers of Western Asia. It rises from two chief sources in the Armenian Mountains, one of them at Domli, twenty-five miles north-east of Ezeroum, and little more than a degree from the Black Sea; the other on the northern slope of the mountain range called _Ala-Tagh_, near the village of _Diyadin_, and not far from Mount Ararat. Both branches flow at first towards the west or south-west, passing through the wildest mountain-districts of Armenia; they meet at _Kebban-Maden_, nearly in longitude 39° east from Greenwich, having run respectively 400 and 270 miles. Here the stream formed by their combined waters is 120 yards wide, rapid and very deep. The last part of its course, from _Hit_ downwards, is through a low, flat, and alluvial plain, over which it has a tendency to spread and stagnate; above _Hit_, and from thence to Samosata, the country along its banks is for the most part open but hilly; north of Samosata, the stream runs in a narrow valley among high mountains, and is interrupted by numerous rapids. The entire course is calculated at 1,780 miles, nearly 650 more than that of the Tigris, and only 200 short of that of the Indus; and of this distance more than two-thirds (1,200 miles) is navigable for boats, and even, as the expedition of Col. Chesney proved, for small steamers. The width of the river is greatest at the distance of 700 or 800 miles from its mouth. The river has also in this part of its course the tendency already noted, to run off and waste itself in vast marshes, which every year more and more cover the alluvial tract west and south of the stream. From this cause its lower course is continually varying, and it is doubted whether at present, except in the season of the inundation, any portion of the Euphrates water is poured into the _Shat-el-Arab_.
The annual inundation of the Euphrates is caused by the melting of the snows in the Armenian highlands. It occurs in the month of May. The rise of the Tigris is earlier, since it drains the southern flank of the great Armenian chain. The Tigris scarcely overflows, but the Euphrates inundates large tracts on both sides of its course from Hit downwards.
The Euphrates has at all times been of some importance as furnishing a line of traffic between the east and the west. Herodotus speaks of persons, probably merchants, using it regularly on their passage from the Mediterranean to Babylon. Alexander appears to have brought to Babylon by the Euphrates route vessels of some considerable size, which he had had made in Cyprus and Phœnicia. They were so constructed that they could be taken to pieces, and were thus carried piecemeal to Thapsacus, where they were put together and launched. The disadvantage of the route was the difficulty of conveying return cargoes against the current. According to Herodotus, the boats which descended the river were broken to pieces and sold at Babylon, and the owners returned on foot to Armenia, taking with them only the skins. The spices and other products of Arabia formed their principal merchandise. On the whole there are sufficient grounds for believing that throughout the Babylonian and Persian periods this route was made use of by the merchants of various nations, and that by it the east and west continually interchanged their most important products.